Before 9-11

*This comment is available as a text file [here](https://pastebin.com/DDig5QJP). Please feel free to repost it.

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The truth about Islam - that it is **NOT** "a religion of peace" - was well-known prior to 9/11. The Western world held the standard view that Islam is, at best, a violent cult at permanent war with outsiders (see examples below).

After 9/11, a wall of lies and misinformation - carefully and skillfully constructed and perpetuated by politicians, global elites, and the MSM - sprung up between the public and this reality.

* **852** “Any cult which denies the divinity of Christ, does not profess the existence of the Holy Trinity, refutes baptism, defames Christians, and derogates the priesthood, we consider to be damned. Your prophet is a precursor of the anti-Christ and other profane doctrine.” Christians martyred by Muslims in Spain, as recorded in the [*Memoriale Sanctorum.*](http://archive.is/4Mppf)

* **1095** Pope Urban II launches the first Crusade to fight back against the Muslim invaders of Christendom.

* **1259** Thomas Aquinas publishes his [*Summa Contra Gentiles*](http://archive.is/FeTEa). He describes Mohammed and his followers as "wild and beastlike," "carnal men who seek carnal pleasures," "utterly ignorant of all divine teaching," "devoid of supernatural agency," who "increase their numbers only by violence and force of arms."

* **1320** Dante's *Divine Comedy,* one of the West's greatest works of literature, consigns Mohammed to eternal torment in the eighth level of hell.

* **1599** Spanish archbishop Juan de Ribera, in his *Catechismo para la Instruccion de los Nuevos Convertidos de los Moros,* describes Islamic teachings as "vicious bestialities," spread through "the force of arms, violence, fictions, lies, and carnal license." He refuses to accept Islam as a religion, instead calling it a "blasphemous, vicious cult, an invention of the devil, and the direct way into the fires of hell."

* **1605** Miguel de Cervantes publishes *El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha,* widely regarded as the first modern novel. It includes several chapters about Christian slaves held by Muslims in Algeria, written from Cervantes' traumatic experiences when he was held as a captured slave by Muslims for five years.

* **1704** Englishman Joseph Pitts publishes his account of torture, beatings, illness, and forced conversion as a captured slave to Muslims in his book, *A Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mohadmetans.* By 1731, the book was in its third edition.

* **1787** Italian theologian Alfonsus Liguori describes Islam as "filthy" and "only fit for beasts," in his book, *The History of Heresies and their Refutation.*

* **1794** The U.S. Navy is created to [stop Muslims](http://archive.is/5usAb) from causing terror and chaos on the seas, and taking American sailors as slaves.

* **1853** Italian priest and writer John Bosco describes Islam in *Il Cattolico, Istruito Nella Sua Religione, Trattenimenti di un Padre di Famiglia co’ suoi Figliuoli, secondo I bisogni del tempo,* as "a monstrous mixture of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity" that "favors every sort of licentiousness" and is propagated through "the force of arms." He says Mohammed is the leader of "a troop of brigands" that conquers people "not by introducing the Truth, not by miracles or prophecy; but for one reason only, to raise his sword over the heads of the conquered shouting: believe or die.”

* **1860** A [statue of King Richard the Lionheart,](https://pasteboard.co/IQ1vEzd.jpg) 12th century crusader, is installed outside the Palace of Westminster, memorializing the threat to Europe by Islam for more than a thousand years.

* **1883** "Islam is the seamless union of the spiritual and the temporal, it is the reign of dogma, it is the heaviest chain mankind has ever born [...] as soon as Islam had a mass of ardent believers at its disposal, it destroyed everything in its path. Religious terror and hypocrisy were the order of the day. Islam has been liberal when weak and violent when strong." Joseph Ernest Renan, French historian, in *L’Islamisme et La Science: conférence faite à la Sorbonne.*

* **1885** It's announced to the British public that Major-General Charles Gordon has given his life fighting Muslim jihadis in the Sudan. He is considered a national hero and in 1888 a statue of him is erected in Trafalgar Square, London. In 1948, Winston Churchill referred to Gordon as "the model of a Christian hero." *Crusader in Babylon: W. T. Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette,* by Raymond L. Schults, 1972.

* **1919** The Foreign Office of the British government issues a handbook entitled *The Rise of Islam and the Caliphate: the Pan-Islamic Movement.* This is still available at the [British Library](http://archive.is/pD9YN).

* **1929** British-French historian Hilaire Belloc warns everyone in his book, *Survivals And New Arrivals,* that Islam is "a strong menace to the peace of Europe."

* **1953** "The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general [...] the story of [Mohammed's] writing to the powers around him shows that such a universal position was implicit in his mind, and it certainly developed immediately after his death, when the Muslim armies advanced out of Arabia." Page 89, *The Encyclopedia of Islam,* the 20th century's single most authoritative account of Islam in English.

Century after century, writers, historians, politicians, royalty, military leaders, church leaders... they all knew, going back 1400 years, that Islam is *in no way a "religion of peace."*

We knew. Everybody fucking knew.