When Islam Started Colonialism, Europeans Were Forced to Respond
When Muslims hailing from the Arabian peninsula captured the nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, they did so to capture the Silk Road trade between Europe and Asia. First, Muslims colonized North Africa. Then, they captured Southern Europe and parts of Eastern Europe. Europeans, faced with centuries of jihad war, were forced to find a way out.
At this point, Turkey’s Istanbul had become the wealthiest urban center in the world, profiting off of exorbitant fees the Muslim world could charge Asian and European merchants seeking access through now Islamic territories.
Who Started Colonialism?
So why do we keep saying “Europeans started colonialism” when, in reality, Muslims first colonized Europe? Why do we keep saying “Europeans started black slavery” when Arabs did. Muslims, in need of domestic labor, began capturing blacks from East Africa, neutering most of them. Black females caught in the Arabs’ nets met an even grimmer fate: they were killed.
In all, Muslims captured up to 18 million black slaves, including at least 2 million white Europeans. Yet, I was told in school that Europeans started colonialism just for the spices. Because, of course, those stupid barbarians of the North couldn’t make their food taste right. Great Britain conquered the world for spices!
Alas, that’s all anti-European nonsense. The countries that use most spices today are all tropical countries that need to cover up the taste of foods rotting in the hot sun. Europeans, certainly with the help of winter’s freezer, could make their harvested foods last for much longer.
Responding to Islam
No, the truth is that Europeans started their colonialism only in response to Islamic colonialism, namely to find ways around the growing Islamic dominance in the regions surrounding Europe. Muslims started colonialism, and Europeans responded.
In fact, looking back at Islam’s development, it seems Islam always meant to capture the global trade routes from East to West in order to dominate the world economy. Muslims would have ruled the world if it hadn’t been for those pesky Europeans and their ocean-worthy sails to undermine Islam’s economic power base.
Europeans ultimately found a way around Africa to India, bypassing the Muslim-dominated lands. And then, Columbus found a passage further West, thinking he’d found India, but actually stumbling upon the Americas. The rest is history.
Whether European elites already had knowledge of the existence of these American continents is an interesting topic of debate. The reality is that the European colonization of the Americas made the Mediterranean Sea less important. Global trade shifted to the Atlantic, connecting West Africa to Latin America and Western Europe to Eastern USA.
Newfound Wealth for Europeans
Importantly, the global wealth center then shifted from Istanbul toward London (plus Antwerp, Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam). The British were simply lucky. The way the winds blow sail ships back across the Atlantic to Europe meant most goods were arriving to North-Western Europe, where the Dutch and the English competed for power, as France colonized West Africa, while Spain and Portugal targeted Southern America.
Europe grew wealthier and ultimately globally powerful at the expense of the Islamic world, which now withered away.
Islam Strikes Back
But Islam struck back: Muslims began their aggressive campaigns to try to Islamize India. They succeeded to some degree, but at the expense of millions of women mass gang raped and countless millions of men dead.
Some estimate the total number of Indian dead at the hands of Muslim killers at 230 million over the course of several centuries. Islam continued to expand the territories under its control, today including Indonesia and many of the Asian/ Oceanic islands.
At the same time, of course, especially under the influence of Western European Protestants, Christianity spread to all the Western colonies: the USA, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and many other lands in Latin America and even in Africa.
A Global Jihad
A trade conflict between Christian Europeans and Arab Muslims has ballooned into a global game of geopolitical chess. Christians and Muslims alike each tried to convert territories crucial to their global trade successes.
Today, Islam is rapidly flooding Europe with Islamic “refugees” while blaming the West for the migrations. In reality, we should all know that the migrations to Europe are part of an already 1400-year-long war between Islam and European Christendom.
This is simply the next chapter, when Islam tried to conquer Germany, France, Britain, and other countries via the womb and via migration routes.
Will Europeans find another way out? If space isn’t an option, can we colonize the Sub-Arctic to escape Islam once again? Or do we point our heaviest rockets at our inner cities and give them “brimstone and fire”?