Thread: Video: Winston Churchill's Comments on Islam

The opinions expressed by Mr. Churchill obviously are his own.

Video: Winston Churchill's Comments on Islam
W.River War, 1899

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZL3Xri1 ... ature=fvwp

Since no source documentation of Churchill's remarks is provided with the video other than a reference to one of Churchill's least-known books, the following supporting sections are taken from:

"Winston Churchill on Islam"
By Adrian Morgan
10 April, 2007

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By the time his first book was published, Churchill had taken part in active service, fighting in Bangalore. He joined Lord Kitchener's army in the Sudan, and took part in the Battle of Omdurman on September 2, 1898. This battle took place in what is now a suburb of Khartoum, and pitted British troops against 50,000 belonging to a local warlord, Abdullah al-Taashi. This man called himself the Khalifa or "Caliph", and was the successor of Muhammad Ahmad. Ahmad had been the self-styled "Mahdi" (Muslim Messiah) who had beheaded General Gordon at Khartoum in 1885. The war in Sudan was a religious war. The region had been exploited by the Egyptians from 1819 to 1883. Originally the "Mahdi" had waged war against Muslim Egypt but, irritated by the presence of 150 British troops in Sudan, he soon declared Jihad (Holy War) against all Christians. The Mahdi himself had died of typhus in 1885. The Battle of Omdurman was not the last decisive battle in this war, but it signaled the last time a cavalry charge was mounted by British troops.

Churchill wrote of the Mahdi's jihad, the succession of the Khalifa and Omdurman in a two-volume book published by Longmans in 1899. Entitled "The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of Sudan", Churchill wrote on pages 248-250 of the second volume: ""How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

This contentious passage became abridged in a shorter version published in 1902. However, the abridged version still contained some harsh words for the fanaticism of Islam. In Chapter One, Churchill wrote: "Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means which helps savage peoples to fight. It is the spirit which enables them to combine - the great common object before which all personal or tribal disputes become insignificant. What the horn is to the rhinoceros, what the sting is to the wasp, the Mohammedan faith was to the Arabs of the Soudan - a faculty of offence or defence."

In Chapter Two, Churchill stated: "All the warlike operations of Mohammedan peoples are characterised by fanaticism" and in its third chapter he observed: "After the fall of Khartoum and the retreat of the British armies the Mahdi became the absolute master of the Soudan. Whatever pleasures he desired he could command, and, following the example of the founder of the Mohammedan faith, he indulged in what would seem to Western minds gross excesses. He established an extensive harem for his own peculiar use, and immured therein the fairest captives of the war."

Churchill entered politics in the same year that "The River War" was originally published. As his eponymous grandson pointed out last March, Churchill noted the threat of Wahhabism on June 14, 1921 at the House of Commons. His grandson stated in an address to the Locke Foundation that this speech "followed "hard on the heels of the Cairo Conference, at which he had presided over the re-shaping of the Middle East". This was the March 1921 Cairo Conference, rather than the better known Cairo Conferences of 1943.


At that time, Churchill was secretary for the British colonies, and he had been involved in the creation of Iraq (in 1921), Jordan (Transjordan) and Palestine. The intention, he told the Commons, was "to set up an Arab government, and to make it take the responsibility, with our aid and our guidance and with an effective measure of our support, until they are strong enough to stand alone ... (and) to reduce our commitments and to extricate ourselves from our burdens while at the same time honorably discharging our obligations and building up strong and effective Arab government which will always be the friend of Britain.

What is less well known is that he also said on that day: "A large number of Bin Saud's followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars.

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http://www.islam-watch.org/AdrianMorgan ... lamism.htm

At that time, Churchill was secretary for the British colonies, and he had been involved in the creation of Iraq (in 1921), Jordan (Transjordan) and Palestine. The intention, he told the Commons, was "to set up an Arab government, and to make it take the responsibility, with our aid and our guidance and with an effective measure of our support, until they are strong enough to stand alone ... (and) to reduce our commitments and to extricate ourselves from our burdens while at the same time honorably discharging our obligations and building up strong and effective Arab government which will always be the friend of Britain.

No good intention ever goes unpunished from these recipients. For all good favors are seen as weakness by them and thus they overtake their helpers and stomp them to dust.