Islamic History Part II:

 Let us take another quick walk back in history in order to get a better picture of what I have been proposing. I will again identify the “First Beast from the Sea” through past events, and then discuss what the “Second Beast from the Earth” will look like in the future.

As stated before, Islam appeared in the 7^th century superseding three previous “horns” of Rome: the pagan Roman Empire, Constantine’s vast Christian Empire, and then the Eastern Christian Byzantine Empire. Islam’s main aim was to convert and conquer the entire world for Allah, totally destroying the Christians and Jews (God’s “people of the Book”). This was to be accomplished by force and upon threat of death, according to the Koran: “Fight those who believe not in Allah...” (Surah 9:29), and “Kill the disbelievers wherever we [you] find them” (Surah 2:191). In only 100 years, Islam swept by sword and scimitar across four immense regions: from the Arabian Peninsula to as far west as the Iberian Peninsula and parts of France in Europe, all of north of Africa, parts of the Balkan region, Persia, and as far east as Central Asia. Several Caliphates (such as the Rashidun and Umayyad) quickly conquered the important Christian centers of Damascus, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Carthage, though they could not overtake the Byzantine capital of Constantinople until later in the 15^th century, but not for lack of trying many times.

In the 13^th century, Islam was confronted from the east by Genghis Khan’s equally destructive and blood-thirsty Mongolian Empire in its westward thrust.[1] This began as a multi-religious empire, but by the time of Kublai Khan’s death (his grandson) in the 14^th century, the western portions of its enormous khanates had embraced the Muslim religion.[2] Thus, there were various huge competing Muslim empires in parts of the world at the same time, such as the Egyptian Mameluke Sultanate, the Golden Horde Khanate in Turkey and southern Russia, the Ilkhanate in modern Iraq and Iran, the Chagatai Khanate north of India, and the Delhi Sultanate in India.

Though the ancient Yuan Dynasty of China and the further eastern regions remained mainly Buddhist, the number of Muslims in the Far East also increased.[3] Later, the territory of Russia, for a time governed by the Golden Horde, expelled the Muslims and retained its own version of Christianity. Thus, in this manner, the Mongolian Empire, the largest in contiguous territory of all history, collaborated in spreading Islam between Eurasia, northeast Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia.[4] The Mongols even reached the Levant and Israel as far as Gaza. (See map above of the Mongolian conquests that imposed Islam, plus part of the already conquered Muslim centers of the Middle East, during the 14th century).[5]

Islam did not become a stable semi-unified force in the region surrounding the land of Israel until the Turkish Ottoman Empire took full power in the mid-15^th century (see map at right of Turkish Ottoman territorial gains).[6] While the Christian Byzantine Empire had held various extensions of territory and dominion at different times in the Eastern Mediterranean basin, it was always threatened by the many Islamic efforts to conquer and eliminate it. Constantinople, considered by the Muslims as the Christian capital and symbol of its challenge to their dominion, had been the “bone in the throat of Allah” until they finally conquered it in 1453.[7]

That is when the Muslim Turkish Ottoman government finished destroying the minuscule remaining portion of the Christian Byzantine Empire in the Greek Peloponnese area and Constantinople (colored in purple on the map of Eastern Mediterranean 1450 AD).[8] The Ottoman Empire was never able to conquer the Roman Catholic capital of Rome, though it tried, and the Roman Catholic Empire managed to hold onto central and northern Europe religiously, politically, and socially all through the Middle Ages.

The Spanish Catholic kings (slightly independent from the Roman Catholic Empire in central Europe) expelled the Muslims or Moors from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, together with the Jews. Something often ignored is the fact that the European expeditions of the 15^th century were originally aimed at finding a way to the East around the globe from the West in order to confront and stop Islam.[9] Nevertheless, they were surprised to find a new continent in between, and their focus suddenly changed to a conquest of the New World and its riches. Thus sidetracked, the Ottoman Empire was able to hold onto an even greater territory than the Christian one for six centuries, until after World War I in 1918.

Thus, considering another more powerful kingdom that arose after the “ten horns” of Rome that fits the description in Daniel 7, which I term as the “First Beast from the Sea” and that dominated the land of Israel (without getting bogged down in naming each of the ten horns, which I believe could be symbolic), we might be able to identify the various Islamic emirates, caliphates, and sultanates of the 7^th to 20^th centuries, including the huge unified Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire and all the eastern khanates (Dan. 7:20-21).

During the 16^th century, the Ottoman Empire created its own Sultanic law, or Qanun, aimed at centralizing juridical decisions under one Sultan, who indirectly represented the entire global Muslim populations. At the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman “the Magnificent” (1494-1566), the Ottoman Empire was a multinational, multilingual empire.[10] Suleiman instituted what many call the “Golden Age” of the Ottoman Empire in terms of law, science, education, and the arts, but it was equally cruel. He ruled over 15 to 25 million people, and his capital city was Istanbul, previously the Christian Byzantine capital of Constantinople.  

As a symbol of his power and control over Jerusalem, which was at that time already a Muslim center, Suleiman rebuilt the city’s fallen outer walls between 1537 and 1541. But Suleiman was determined to take all of Europe for the Muslim world by both land and sea (with the help of the infamous Barbary Algiers pirates and Barbarrosa). He was especially determined to take over Vienna and Rome, the still undefeated perceived capitals of the Christians of Central Europe. He captured Belgrade (capital of Serbia) in 1521 and Hungary in 1525, and laid an unsuccessful siege on Vienna in 1529. He also continued having successful campaigns in other parts of Europe for 40 years, decapitating, ravaging, and enslaving thousands of white Christian women and children in order to impose Islam, including massacring the Knights Templars and Hospitallers on the island of Malta in 1565.

Sadly, the Protestant Reformation, initiated by Martin Luther in 1517, did not strengthen the Christian’s defense against Islam, but rather weakened it. Protestants tended to side with the Muslims in these battles because they viewed the Catholic Pope and the Holy Roman Empire (AD 800-1806) as worse than the Turks. Luther even taught passivity towards the Muslim invaders since he said that they were sent to purge God’s people of their sins.[11] “John Calvin went so far as to say that the Islamic prophet and Catholic pope were ‘the two horns of Antichrist,’”[12] promoting a slightly pro-Islamic Protestant perception that is still evident to this day. Lutherans and Calvinists joined the Ottoman forces in 1683, led by the Grand Vizier Mustafa, against the Catholic nation-states of Austria, Germany, and Poland in another effort to capture Vienna.[13] (France and Britain would at times side with the Ottoman Muslims, while Spain and Portugal would sometimes join the Roman Catholic Pope.) When the Ottomans tried to overtake Vienna, the Muslims were defeated with the help of the Polish army of Jan Sobieski (or John III). He later wrote to Pope Innocent: “We came, we saw, God conquered!”[14] Two years later, Orthodox Russia also joined the Catholic “Holy League,” which won 12 of 15 major battles against the Turks between 1683 and 1697.  If Vienna and Rome had been conquered and destroyed, the rest of Europe would have fallen to Islam and later Western history would be very different.

Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire also sought to convert the lands of the New World to Islam and obtain riches. The Barbary pirates, who were still dominating the area of the Mediterranean Sea, applied the same destructive tactics against the new colonies that they used in the Old World by marauding the Eastern coast of the recently-birthed nation of United States. The pirates would try to force it to pay them a regular payment (or jizya) of thousands of dollars upon the threat of further attacks, just as they required taxes from European countries. When they demanded this payment from the new government of the United States, George Washington and the rest of the founders did not understand this mindset. At first they complied with the Muslim demands, but in a few years the US Naval force was established for solving this ransom problem. In 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president, the demand had increased to the equivalent of over three million dollars, and Jefferson refused. The Pasha of Tripoli (part of the Ottoman Empire, capital of modern-day Libya) proclaimed jihad on United States, and the new government again submitted. After the war with Britain in 1812, the U.S. decided to put an end to the Barbary attacks and blackmails once and for all. This led to about 14 years of naval wars against Islam, but finally the naval forces won, as boasted in the Marine Corps’ Hymn as they fought for right and freedom “to the shores of Tripoli.” In this manner, the United States was the first country to set an example to European countries that they could end this Muslim abuse. This was imitated by the French fleet in 1830, which was also able to stop the Algerian piracy, tribute (jizya) payment, and subjection.

The powerful Ottoman Empire finally found its demise in 1918 at the end of World War I, keeping for itself only the modern borders of Turkey (established in 1923). Parts of its land was redistributed by Britain, France, and other allies in order to form new Muslim countries in the Middle East, such as Syria (1925), Lebanon (1926), Iraq (1932), Saudi Arabia (1932), and Jordan (1946), in addition to the new Jewish homeland of Israel (1948). Iran was not affected because it never belonged to the Ottoman Empire. It always had its own version of Shiite (Shia) Islam, while the Ottoman Empire and most of the rest of the Middle East Muslim countries were Sunni, argument based on who was the rightful heir of Islam.

Importantly, the Ottoman Empire’s fall fulfills Daniel 7:11-12 in that “the beast was killed” and its “dominion was taken away,” though the lives of the other beasts that had joined it have been “prolonged for a season and a time.” Thus, I believe that, even though the western thrust of Islam has temporarily been contained, it will make a reappearance at a later date. We can already see its progress by means of illegal immigration and social influence among the Western elite rulers and young college liberals.

As the Anglo-French historian Hilaire Belloc noted at the end of the 19^th century: “Millions of modern people of the white civilization—that is, the civilization of Europe and America—have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, in fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past.”[15]

Remarkably, the temporary demise of Islam after World War I was necessary in order to allow for the rebirth of the nation of Israel: it freed the land of Israel from the Muslim Ottoman Empire so that the remnant of God’s people, the Jews, could return to their ancient land. Combined with World War II, which forced the Jews to return to their land after almost 20 centuries of Great Tribulation worldwide, we can see the end of Gentile rule in Israel and the beginning of the end-times for the fulfillment of God’s plans.

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[1] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire, accessed Feb. 22, 2022.

[2] Britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Islamic-world/Conversion-of-Mongols-to-Islam, accessed Feb. 22, 2022.

[3] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire, accessed Feb. 22, 2022.

[4] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan, accessed Feb. 18, 2022.

[5] Map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4795749, Asia_in_1345.svg, accessed Feb. 22, 2022.

[6] Map: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_the_Ottoman_Empire#/media/File:OttomanEmpire

In1683.png, public domain, accessed March 15, 2022.

[7] Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar, 230.

[8] Map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire#/media/File:Eastern_Mediterranean_1450.svg, CC BY-SA 2.5, accessed March 15, 2022.

[9] Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar, 250.

[10] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent, accessed Feb. 18, 2022.

[11] Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar, 260.

[12] Ibid, 261 (footnote).

[13] Ibid, 269.

[14] Ibid, 278.

[15] Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (London: Sheed and Ward, 1938), in Ibrahim, 295.