Churchill-on-Islam

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

Churchill on Islam

Certain observations made by Winston Churchill in the late 1890s have a definite ring of the familiar, and remind us that the violent, barbarous forces of Islam we're currently facing around the world are nothing new. His youthful military career gave him the opportunity to observe Islam in action on the Northwest Frontier (the Swat Valley region of present-day Pakistan), and in the Sudan. In both settings, it seems to have made an impression.

Unlike the PC dhimmis who run Britain these days, Churchill was brutally honest in his appraisals of Islam. (He was a little less candid regarding his skepticism for the Christian religion; but it's there for anyone who knows what to look for.) He was quite the philosopher, actually, from an early age; and some of the things he wrote in his books and letters were surprisingly deep. Stuff you'd never expect to see flowing from the pen of a modern-day politician.

The pugnacious, Nazi-defying Churchill of the history books.

Churchill, circa 1897.

However, in the same book, Churchill offered a harsh appraisal of the ideology that motivated the Sudanese jihadists. The following quote has become somewhat popular among post-9/11 anti-Islamists with a penchant for history:

Over all is a bright blue sky and powerful sun. Such is the scenery of the theatre of war.

The inhabitants of these wild but wealthy valleys are of many tribes, but of similar character and condition. The abundant crops which a warm sun and copious rains raise from a fertile soil, support a numerous population in a state of warlike leisure. Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land. Tribe wars with tribe. The people of one valley fight with those of the next. To the quarrels of communities are added the combats of individuals. Khan assails khan, each supported by his retainers. Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor. Every man's hand is against the other, and all against the stranger.

Nor are these struggles conducted with the weapons which usually belong to the races of such development. To the ferocity of the Zulu are added the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer. The world is presented with that grim spectacle, "the strength of civilisation without its mercy." At a thousand yards the traveller falls wounded by the well-aimed bullet of a breech-loading rifle. His assailant, approaching, hacks him to death with the ferocity of a South-Sea Islander. The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age.

Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherit in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour. That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword -- the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men -- stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by the spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honour not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica.

In such a state of society, all property is held directly by main force. Every man is a soldier. Either he is the retainer of some khan -- the man-at-arms of some feudal baron as it were -- or he is a unit in the armed force of his village -- the burgher of mediaeval history.

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Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor's land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually soon abandoned, in favor of an appeal to force.

All are held in the grip of miserable superstition. The power of the ziarat, or sacred tomb, is wonderful. Sick children are carried on the backs of buffaloes, sometimes sixty or seventy miles, to be deposited in front of such a shrine, after which they are carried back -- if they survive the journey -- in the same way. It is painful even to think of what the wretched child suffers in being thus jolted over the cattle tracks. But the tribesmen consider the treatment much more efficacious than any infidel prescription. To go to a ziarat and put a stick in the ground is sufficient to ensure the fulfillment of a wish. To sit swinging a stone or coloured glass ball, suspended by a string from a tree, and tied there by some fakir, is a sure method of securing a fine male heir. To make a cow give good milk, a little should be plastered on some favorite stone near the tomb of a holy man. These are but a few instances; but they may suffice to reveal a state of mental development at which civilisation hardly knows whether to laugh or weep.

Their superstition exposes them to the rapacity and tyranny of a numerous priesthood -- "Mullahs," "Sahibzadas," "Akhundzadas," "Fakirs," -- and a host of wandering Talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the theological students in Turkey, and live free at the expense of the people. More than this, they enjoy a sort of "droit du seigneur," and no man's wife or daughter is safe from them. Of some of their manners and morals it is impossible to write. As Macaulay has said of Wycherley's plays, "they are protected against the critics as a skunk is protected against the hunters." They are "safe, because they are too filthy to handle, and too noisome even to approach."

Yet the life even of these barbarous people is not without moments when the lover of the picturesque might sympathise with their hopes and fears. In the cool of the evening, when the sun has sunk behind the mountains of Afghanistan, and the valleys are filled with a delicious twilight, the elders of the village lead the way to the chenar trees by the water's side, and there, while the men are cleaning their rifles, or smoking their hookas, and the women are making rude ornaments from beads, and cloves, and nuts, the Mullah drones the evening prayer. Few white men have seen, and returned to tell the tale. But we may imagine the conversation passing from the prices of arms and cattle, the prospects of the harvest, or the village gossip, to the great Power, that lies to the southward, and comes nearer year by year. ...... Then the Mullah will raise his voice and remind them of other days when the sons of the prophet drove the infidel from the plains of India, and ruled at Delhi, as wide an Empire as the Kafir holds to-day: when the true religion strode proudly through the earth and scorned to lie hidden and neglected among the hills: when mighty princes ruled in Bagdad, and all men knew that there was one God, and Mahomet was His prophet. And the young men hearing these things will grip their Martinis *, and pray to Allah, that one day He will bring some Sahib -- best prize of all -- across their line of sight at seven hundred yards so that, at least, they may strike a blow for insulted and threatened Islam. …

The weapons of the nineteenth century are in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age. Sound familiar? But in present-day Pakistan, the breechloading Martini-Henry rifles of yesterday's gun-savvy tribesmen have been replaced by AK-47s, suicide bomb belts, and nuclear weapons.

Churchill continues:

* (This refers to the Martini-Henry rifle, not the high-octane drink of the infidel.)

Apparently political correctness was not really an issue in 1899. Although some well-informed infidels may still privately compare Muslims to rabid dogs -- while watching footage of violent, frenzied riots, perhaps -- the comparison doesn't get bandied about much in polite society these days.

And how many aspiring politicians today would write a line as straightforward as Churchill's "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world."? (Aside from Geert Wilders, perhaps.)

While it's true that Churchill was a political conservative for most of his life, he was a Liberal is his early years, when the above passages were written. And, as I mentioned earlier, he seems to have been fairly non-religious. His son, Randolph, never even read the Bible until he was a grown man serving in World War II -- when his bemused reaction to the Holy Book annoyed his Catholic comrade-in-arms, Evelyn Waugh, when he finally read it (on a bet). Waugh wrote to his wife about Randolph slapping his side and chortling, "God, isn't God a shit!"

Many anti-Islamists in the 21st Century have pointed out the obvious comparison between our current situation and the one that Churchill faced in the 1930s, when he was trying to warn his fellow Britons about the danger that Nazi Germany posed. He was a political outcast for years, during the lead-up to World War II -- dismissed as an alarmist and a fear-monger, because most Britons didn't appreciate the grave danger that Hitler represented.

Churchill would certainly be a very useful man to have on hand today. His bold, Nazi-defying rhetoric ("We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender") is inspiring stuff in our present conflict with the Religion of Peace. And the candid appraisals of Islam that he gave in his youthful accounts of adventures in far-off, exotic lands serve as reminders that, yes, we're right to be horrified by the institutionalized barbarism of this religion. And it's okay to say so.

As a young man, eager for action and glory, Churchill served with the British cavalry as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. In 1897, he took part in the Siege of Malakand in the Northwest Territory. This is the lawless "tribal area" on the Afghan border in present-day Pakistan, which was then the dodgy end of India, the "jewel" of the British Empire. It was here that Churchill had his first encounter with Islamic fanaticism, in the form of wild-eyed Pathan tribesmen. (Also known as Pashtuns.)

This area is where the "Great Game" was being played out between Great Britain and Russia (from roughly 1813 to 1907), as they vied for control of the region. The British were afraid that the advancing Russians would use Afghanistan as a staging point for an invasion of India. (This is the setting for Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel, Kim, which describes a young British spy's adventures in the Khyber Pass.) The British government's Forward Policy called for sending troops to guard the passes along the Hindu Kush, against a possible attack by the tsar's Cossack forces. This policy became one of the primary causes of the uprising that brought Churchill to the area.

In the summer of 1897, the mullahs in the Northwest Territory were whipping up a religious fervor that was partly inspired by Turkey's war with Greece. The locals were also upset by a tax on the salt mined at Kohat, and by the passage of British troops through their region, as they shored up the frontier against the Russians. An outbreak began among the tribes in the Swat Valley -- the folks currently giving refuge to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda thugs (and, consequently, the recipients of the occasional Hellfire missile, launched from a Predator drone that wanders over the border from Afghanistan). The local chieftains had been receiving subsidies from the British in exchange for their compliance and good will, but many of their tribesmen were lured away by the infectious zeal of the mullahs. One of the more eccentric of these fiery religious leaders, the "Mad Mullah", Sad-ullah, gathered an especially large following, eventually bringing twelve thousand jihadists to Malakand, eager to eject the vile infidels from the land of the True Believers.

General Sir Bindon Blood (how's that for a cool name?) assembled a force to deal with the Mad Mullah and put down the revolt. In his autobiography, My Early Life: A Roving Commission, Churchill says that Sir Bindon Blood

Handbook for Infidels

The Candid Progressive's Guide

to Islam & its War on the West

In 1898, Churchill had his second brush with the True Believers, when he transferred to the 21st Lancers in the Sudan, which the British were in the process of re-conquering from the Muslim fanatics de jour, the Ansars (often referred to as "dervishes" by the Brits of the day) -- followers of Abdullah al-Taaisha, the successor to the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, who had died (a bit prematurely) in 1885. In Shia and Sunni eschatology, the Mahdi is the "Guided One" -- the prophesied redeemer of Islam, who will spend a few years (seven, nine, or nineteen, depending upon the interpretation) getting things tidied up before the Resurrection Day. The Mahdi's job is to basically clean house, ridding the world of "injustice and tyranny" (the non-Muslim kinds, no doubt) before the Big Day arrives. He is supposed to be aided in this task by the Prophet Isa -- known in the infidel West as Jesus Christ, the Son of God -- who apparently failed to show up for work. (Being, at heart, a hippie slacker, as we suspected.)

After defeating an Egytian army, which tried to take him out of play as a religious imposter, Muhammad Ahmad called for jihad, declaring: "I am the Mahdi, the Successor of the Prophet of God. Cease to pay taxes to the infidel Turks and let everyone who finds a Turk kill him, for the Turks are infidels."

That's pretty handy, right? If someone tries to thwart your religio-political ambitions, simply declare them infidels, and your rabid followers will rip them to shreds, or die trying. It's a trick that many Muslim leaders, before and after the "Mahdi", have used to good effect -- from the prophet Mohammed to Osama bin Laden.

Apparently, the ardent Ansars were nonplussed by the fact that the Mahdi had died before the advent of the Yamn al-Qiyamah -- the "Day of Standing Up", when the dead will supposedly rise from their graves in Night of the Living Dead fashion. To my knowledge, those ancient prophesies don't say anything about the Mahdi biting the dust (from typhus) before Judgement Day arrives. But, by that point, the guys were all dressed up and ready to kick some infidel ass; so these End Times yearnin' zealots kept going for another fourteen years, 'til the Brits handed them their final ass-stomping at the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat.

If there's one quality that religious fanatics everywhere seem to share, it's the ability to deceive themselves in the face of overwhelming evidence that runs counter to their fondest desires -- which, of course, suggests that "faith" is nothing more than a willingness to be duped -- and maybe die fighting for the sake of a fairy tale that would embarrass a thoughtful ten-year-old.

The savagery of these tribesmen is suggested by the following verses from Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads, which were popular with British soldiers of the day:

When wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains

And the women come out to cut up what remains.

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your Gawd like a soldier.

Regarding the same issue, Churchill wrote: "It is a point of honour on the Indian frontier not to leave wounded men behind. Death by inches and hideous mutilation are the invariable measure meted out to all who fall in battle into the hands of the Pathan tribesmen: We all laid hands on the wounded and began to carry and drag them away down the hill".

While serving in the field, Churchill also acted as a war correspondent. His articles for the Daily Telegraph often arrived before the reports of the Intelligence Service. Colonel Ian Hamilton wrote that "Churchill was out all day, stalking the enemy snipers, or relieving some picket whose position seemed open for bloodshed. At night he wrote copiously."

In his 1898 book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, Churchill made the following observations regarding the exotic locals he had encountered in the Northwest Territory, and their alien culture.

...there are many people in England, and perhaps elsewhere, who seem to be unable to contemplate military operations for clear political objects, unless they can cajole themselves into the belief that their enemy are utterly and hopelessly vile. To this end the Dervishes, from the Mahdi and the Khalifa downwards, have been loaded with every variety of abuse and charged with all conceivable crimes. This may be very comforting to philanthropic persons at home; but when an army in the field becomes imbued with the idea that that the enemy are vermin who cumber the earth, instances of barbarity may easily be the outcome. This unmeasured condemnation is moreover as unjust as it is dangerous and unnecessary... We are told that the British and Egyptian armies entered Omdurman to free the people from the Khalifa's yoke. Never were rescuers more unwelcome.

Churchill as a young cavalry officer and author.

Anyway, on September 2nd, 1898, a gung-ho Lieutenant Churchill took part in what is considered to be the last real cavalry charge by British forces, during the Battle of Omdurman. (Gun buffs know this as the action in which the forward-thinking Churchill used a new-fangled 7.63mm Mauser C96 "Broomhandle" automatic pistol to good effect. As he later wrote: "The Mauser was a real ripper. I fired all ten rounds in the magazine at point blank range, I killed 5 men for certain and wounded five more severely." Many consider this to be the first documented use of an automatic pistol in combat.) In this battle, 8,000 British soldiers, aided by 17,000 Indian and Egyptian troops, defeated approximately 50,000 Sudanese religious fanatics -- who apparently must have pissed off Allah in some way, because he allowed the disciplined British forces, armed with modern rifles, machineguns, and artillery, to give them a humiliating thrashing.

How humiliating? Well, it seems that 10,000 devout "dervishes" were killed, versus only 48 godless infidels on the British side. This sort of catastrophic defeat is what constrained Muslim aggression to a large degree for roughly three centuries.

Churchill took a somewhat nuanced view of this conflict. (If scathing criticism for both sides can be considered "nuanced".) In his 1899 book, The River War, he was very critical of Lord Kitchner's brutal handling of the Sudanese campaign -- a ballsy move for a young man with political aspirations in turn-of-the-century Britain.

In that book, he also dealt with the British tendency to demonize the enemy:

"The Charge of the 21st Lancers", by Edward Matthew Hale

was very proud to be the direct descendant of the notorious Colonel Blood, who in the reign of King Charles II (in 1671) had attempted to steal by armed force the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. ... Brought to trial for high treason and several other capital offences, he was acquitted and immediately appointed to command the King's bodyguard.

So that's what we know of Sir Bindon Blood: cool name, colorful ancestry, and handy with a handgun. Winston seems to have admired him, on the whole.

By 1897, twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Churchill had tired of the soft life of polo and parades at his cushy posting in Bombay; so he got himself assigned to General Blood's Malakand Field Force. "Like most young fools," Churchill wrote later, "I was looking for trouble."

For anyone looking for trouble, this was a likely place to find it. The fiercely independent locals in this lawless region had for centuries honed their fighting skills in blood feuds fought over Zar (gold), Zan (women), and Zamin (land). They were fearless guerilla warriors, who had developed a cult of the rifle, which served them well in the wide-open spaces of their homeland. In My Early Life, Churchill gives the following tongue-in-cheek description of the situation:

-- And that the general...

had one personal ordeal in this campaign. A fanatic approaching in a deputation ... whipped out a knife, and rushed upon him from about eight yards. Sir Bindon Blood, mounted upon his horse, drew his revolver, which most of us thought on a General of Division was merely a token weapon, and shot his assailant dead at two yards.

As they advanced through the region, the Brits bought the support of the local khans, just as the Americans did when they invaded Afghanistan a century later (the forming of mercenary political alliances being a time-honored practice among warlords in this part of the world). In the mountain strongholds of the rebellious tribes, they conducted a punitive campaign -- burning crops and houses, filling wells with stones, and occasionally engaging in firefights. From our cozy 21st Century perspective, accounts of harsh reprisals like these, carried out by white European imperialists in a far-off land populated by poor brown people, may be a little jarring. But bear in mind that this revolt by the mullahs and their fanatical followers was partly inspired by their (religiously-motivated) enthusiasm for the war that the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire was then waging against the (Christian) Greeks -- whose land had been conquered centuries earlier and made part of the Islamic Caliphate, very much against their will. In 1897, as in 2011, from the Islamist perspective, Western imperialism in Muslim lands is a vile outrage...while Muslim imperialism in the West (and elsewhere) is a sacred religious duty, and a source of pride for Muslims everywhere.

Into this happy world the nineteenth century brought two new facts; the breech-loading rifle and the British Government. ... The convenience of the breech-loading, and still more of the magazine

(-loading), rifle was nowhere more appreciated than in the Indian highlands. A weapon which would kill with accuracy at fifteen hundred yards opened a whole new vista of delights to every family or clan which could acquire it. ... Rifle-thieves scoured all India to reinforce the efforts of the honest smuggler. A steady flow of the coveted weapons spread its genial influence throughout the frontier, and the respect which the Pathan tribesmen entertained for Christian civilization was vastly enhanced.