Mongols

August 18, 2021 | Clifford D. May |

President Biden had options

He chose the worst of them

September 8, 2017 | Reuel Marc Gerecht |

Perfect Partners

When he won the election, Donald Trump—along with his national security adviser Michael Flynn, his all-purpose counselor Stephen Bannon, and, perhaps, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner—wa...

July 29, 2015 | Clifford D. May |

Defeating Civilization’s Enemies

“The enemy has to be defeated,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter last week told American forces stationed in the Middle East. That is a simple truth, one that, regrettably, is...

June 20, 2014 | Reuel Marc Gerecht |

The Enemy Of My Enemy Is My Enemy

When Ottoman armies marched into Europe in the mid-14th century, Europeans started looking hopefully eastward for enemies of the Turks. Spanish and French kings sent ambassadors to Tamerl...

May 13, 2013 | Reuel Marc Gerecht |

Radioactive Regime

The list is long of Occidentals who’ve fallen for Persia. This isn’t surprising. Compared with Arab lands save Egypt, Iran has a longer history—Hegel described the Persians as &...

April 13, 2012 | James Kirchick Tablet |

Meet Europe’s New Fascists

Márton Gyöngyösi, a member of the Hungarian parliament, does not look the least bit like a neo-Nazi. That may be the most frightening thing about him. Born in 1977 to a...

June 15, 2011 | Clifford D. May |

You Must Remember This

 There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 – just 555 short years ago -- troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christi...

October 21, 2010 | Long War Journal

Anwar Awlaki’s Message to Inspire Readers

The second edition of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) Inspire magazine makes multiple references to the controversy over the Obama administration's decision to allow US force...

May 29, 2008 |

You Must Remember This


The Siege of Constantinople
The Siege of Constantinople
There’s an anniversary this week we might do well to recall. On May 29, 1453 – just 555 short years ago -- troops led by Mehmed II broke through the walls of the ancient Christian capital of Constantinople.
 
Mehmed the Conqueror – as he would be known from that day forward -- rode triumphantly into the city on a white horse. Soon, churches would be converted into mosques. Constantinople would become Istanbul.
 
“For the West this was a dark moment,” writes historian Efraim Karsh in his masterful book, Islamic Imperialism. “For Islam it was a cause for celebration. For nearly a millennium Constantinople had been the foremost barrier – physically and ideologically – to Islam’s sustained drive for world conquest and the object of desire of numerous Muslim rulers.”
 
Mehmed cast himself as not just as a master builder of the Ottoman Empire, but also as the caliph – the supreme spiritual and temporal ruler of all the world’s Muslims, chosen to “act as Allah’s Sword ‘blazing forth the way of Islam from the East to West.’” He would go on to conquer Greece, Serbia, the Balkans south of the Danube and the Crimean peninsula.  His grandson and great grandson would extend the caliphate to include the Levant, Egypt, the Arabian Hijaz including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Iraq, North Africa, and most of Hungary.
 
The desire to conquer the world – or even just one’s neighbors -- is hardly an Islamic invention. Genghis Khan is not a name: It’s a title. It means “universal ruler.” The man history knows as Genghis Khan believed it was his divinely ordained mission to lead the Mongols to global domination.
 
And he loved his work. “Man's highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies,” he said, “to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters.”

May 7, 2008 |

Ships of Fools?

To fully appreciate the complications and dangers America faces in the post Sept. 11, 2001, world, consider recent actions taken by the government of one of America's strategic allies....

October 23, 2006 | History News Network

The Caliph-Strophic Debate

It seems that the US is having a hard time winning the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims, but an equally serious problem can be observed in the intellectual circles of America where some have...