Dr. Harold Rhode, a Fellow at the Jerusalem Center, served for 28 years as an advisor on the Islamic world in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

Exec. summary of interview:

  • In the year 712, the Muslim general Tariq led the Muslims from Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar and took over the Iberian Peninsula. Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, Spain belongs to the Muslims – forever. Professor Bernard Lewis wrote in his autobiography that in the early 1980s he was at a conference on Islamic affairs in Cordova, Spain, with a group of Turks. They assumed he was also a Turk because he was speaking in Turkish. He heard them say, “We’re not just worrying about the preservation of Islamic culture here, we are preparing for the Islamic re-conquest of Spain, because we of course know it’s ours.”
  • Classic Islamic warfare is based on pre-Islamic Arabian warfare which involved raiding parties, which we call terrorism today. It’s small groups that attack, terrorize, instill fear in the other side, and withdraw. Attack and withdraw. When they use daggers and they use swords, that’s what their Prophet Muhammad and those around him used. they’re just imitating what their prophet and his generals did.
  • A Sunni Muslim friend who is totally secular told me in Baghdad: “You’re missing the point of ISIS. They’re appealing to our Muslim soul. They say that the whole world must be Muslim, and eventually it will be. And it must be under a Caliph who will take the place of the Prophet Muhammad, and be under Muslim law. That is what we learned from the time that we were little children.”
  • We’re witnessing the islamification of Europe. The Russians understand this very well and Putin understands that he’s in an internal battle against Islamic orthodoxy that wants to take over the world. The Chinese have the same problem in northwestern China in Xinjiang that was conquered by Islam in the 1100s, and so, just like Spain, is Islamic territory forever.
  • And it’s the same story in Israel. The State Department is worried about settlements in the West Bank, but Islam conquered what is all of Israel and the West Bank in the year 637. So Tel Aviv is as much a settlement in the Muslim mind as any settlement in the West Bank – it’s all the same. According to this view, all of this territory must be and will be eventually returned to Islamic rule.
  • According to Islamic holy law, there is no such thing as a permanent peace between Muslims and non-Muslims. Bygones are not bygones. You may have a temporary truce, but there is an eternal battle between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world. Europe is considered part of the non-Islamic world which is in the process of becoming part of the Muslim world. An ISIS magazine had the Vatican on its cover. They see it as the center of the Christian world. So if they capture the Vatican, they’ve captured the Christian world.

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