If Abu Rafi’s murder was a kind of Kristallnacht, Muhammad’srnattack against the tribe of Banu-‘l-Mustahq, later in thatrnsame year, was a decisive step towards Endloesung. His followersrnslaughtered many tribesmen and looted thousands of theirrncamels and sheep; they also kidnapped 500 of their women.rnThe night after the battle, Muhammad and his brigands stagedrnan orgy of rape. As one Abu Sa’id Khudri remembered, a slightrnproblem needed to be resolved first: In order to obtain ransomrnfrom the sur’iving tribesmen, the Muslims had pledged not tornviolate their captives.rnWe were lusting after women and chastit)’ had becomerntoo hard for us, but we wanted to get the ransom moneyrnfor our prisoners. So we wanted to use the Azl [coitus inteiruptus]..rn.. We asked the Prophet about it and he said:rn”You are not under any obligation to stop vourseU’es fromrndoing it like that.”rnThe members of the last surviving Jewish tribe in Medinah,rnBanu Qurazah, were even less fortunate. Muhammad offeredrnthe men conversion to Islam as an alternative to death; uponrntheir refusal, all 900 were decapitated in front of their enslavedrnwomen and children. The women were subsequently raped;rnMuhammad chose as his concubine one Raihana Bint Amr,rnwhose father and husband were both slaughtered before herrneves only hours earlier.rnIslam enters the new millenniumrnwith a strong hand. For starters, itrnis “non-white,” non-European, andrnnon-Christian, which makes it a naturalrnally of the ruling Western elites.rnThis same man is explicitly upheld by all Muslims everywherern—from Los Angeles to Sarajevo, from Marseilles tornChechnya—as the paragon of godly, morally impeccable behavior,rnto be admired and emulated until the end of time. Thernprevalence of his name among Muslim men is symbolic of therncovenant. His behavior, and that of his followers, was sanctionedrnin Muhammad’s prophetic revelation, and duly recordedrnin his hoi}’ book:rnAnd all married women are forbidden unto you exceptrnthose captives whom your right hand possesses. It is a decreernof Allah for you. Lawful unto you are all beyondrnthose mentioned, so that you seek them with your wealthrnin honest wedlock, not debauchery.. .. [Koran 4:24]rnNon-Muslims who look for mercy and compassion fromrnthese quarters will search in vain. Muhammad explicitiy forbadernhis followers to make friends of Christians and Jev’s, andrnwarned them of the sanction for disobedience: “He among yournwho taketh them for friends is one of them” (Koran 5:51). Butrnas the marauders could derive no material benefit from corpses,rnthe lives of the conquered could be spared if they agreed to payrna hefty tribute to the Muslims. In his own lifetime, Muhammadrnthus established the model for subsequent relationsrnbetween Islamic conquerors and their Christian or Jewish subjects.rnThe option of conversion was always available, and to be onrnthe right side of Allah —and of historv’, as it seemed for arnlong time—was not too demanding. God, the creator and sustainerrnof the world, rewarded all those who expressed their worshiprnin prayer, almsgiving, and self-purification, and above allrnin unquestioning obedience to Muhammad. That “God isrngreat, and that there is no God but God” was easily grasped byrnthe nomadic tribes of the desert and, later, of the steppe.rnUnderdeveloped culturally and socially, the nomads had fewrntheological and logical qualms about Muhammad’s claim thatrnhe was the sole spokesman for the authentic “religion of Abraham,”rna religion that had been corrupted by Jews and Christianrnalike. Since Jerusalem was, for the time being, out of reach,rnMuhammad audaciously attributed to Abraham the foundingrnof the old pagan sanctuary, the Ka’bah, which housed a piecernof black meteoric rock that became the Muslims’ holy of holies.rnLater, non-Arab converts would translate “the crude and casualrnassertions of the Prophet” into a coherent teaching.rnBetween Muhammad’s death in A.D. 626 and the secondrnsiege of Vienna, just over a thousand years later, Islam expandedrn—at first rapidly, then intermittently—at the expense of everythingrnand everyone in the wav of its warriors. But Islamicrnmodels of culture and society—represented by the horsemenrnwho swept across three continents in the decades after Muhammad’srndeath —were unable to induce the heirs of Christian,rnMiddle Eastern, and Indian civilizations to attune their valuesrnand ways of life to the true faith.rnThere have been times when some Muslim lands were fit forrna civilized man to live in. Baghdad under Harun ar-Rashid inrnthe eighth and early ninth centuries or Cordova under Abd ar-rnRahman in the tenth come to mind, but these brief periods ofrncivilization were based on the readiness to borrow from earlierrncultures, to compile, translate, learn, and absorb —a bit likernAmerica before the closing of its mind. These cultural awakeningsrnhappened in spite of the spirit of Islam, which—unablernto engender interesting ideas of its own —rejected others as arnthreat.rnIn subsequent centuries, cross-fertilization of elementsrnfrom diverse regions and traditions became increasingly difficult:rnIslam was accepted or rejected in its entirety, regardless ofrnlocal custom or tradition. An unprecedented rigidit)’ was introducedrninto the relations between civilizations, reflecting thernfundamental tenet of Islam—accurately restated a decade agornby Bosnia’s president, Alija Izetbegovic, in his Islamic Declarationrn—that “there can be no peace between Islam and otherrnforms of social and political organization.”rnUnleashed as the militant faith of a barbarian war-band, Islamrnturned its boundary with the outside world into a perpetualrnwar zone. For a long time, the outcome of the onslaught wasrnin doubt. The early attack on Christendom reached as far westrnas Tours, and almost enabled the Koran —in Gibbon’s memorablernphrase—to be “taught in the schools of Oxford” to a cir-rn22/CHRONICLESrnrnrn