Welcome to episode six of the Men of Issachar
podcast. We're going to be talking about a subject
that is not the most fun to talk about, but I
think definitely is and is becoming more and
more so relevant to the world landscape and to
the local landscape. We're going to be giving
you tools to gain wisdom on this subject and
gain truthful and biblical perspective. And we
just want to raise awareness on a subject that
is creeping its way into positions of power and
influence. We're going to be talking about the
religion of Islam. I want to draw the distinction
now that we're not blaming the people that have
fallen subject to or are born into Islam. We're
calling out the spirit behind it all. We love
and pray for these folks, and our enemies are
not flesh and blood, but spiritual. I think we
are witnessing our country's lack of wisdom and
deception give ground to the enemy. We're just
saying that we need to take it back before it's
too late, and the deception has reached a critical
threshold. So sit back, relax, and take in this
conversation with Jeff Wright, Terry Gant, and
myself, Jason Gull, as we strive to be men of
this cigar. Welcome everyone to the Men of Issachar
podcast. This is episode six. We're going to
be discussing some of Raymond Ibrahim's books
and talking about the Crusades. Guys, where do
we go from here? Well, Raymond Ibrahim came up
once earlier in a podcast with, I was working
on a review for American Reformer. And so I had
gotten an advanced copy of his most recent book,
which is called The Two Swords of Christ. And
it's the third in a... kind of a trilogy, all
three on the Crusades. They're a really good
intro into the importance of the Crusades and
the historical truth of the Crusades. And so
he started off with Sword and Scimitar, which
mostly focused on the important events of the
Crusades, predominantly battles and sieges and
things like that. So he followed that up with
Defenders of the West, which was many biographies
of, I want to say nine guys. It's either nine
or 10. Yeah. Maybe I can't remember now exactly,
but it's many biographies of those guys and they're
arranged kind of chronologically. Some of them
were contemporaries with each other. So they
cross paths a little bit, but it goes from the
very first crusade all the way kind of through
where the crusades were essentially defending
the heartland of Eastern Europe, where the Ottomans
were pushing their way in. So kind of through
the kind of the end of the Crusades. And then
the Two Swords of Christ emphasizes specifically
the orders of knighthood that were church affiliated,
the most famous two of which are the Hospitallers
and the Templars. And he debunks a lot of Templar
mythology and focuses on a lot of the events
that they participated in and gets kind of down
into like, what were they? What did they do?
How did they come to be formed? Those kinds of
things. that's his three works on that. Now he
also maintains an ongoing blog where he researches
and kind of reports on Islamic violence against
mostly Christians in the Middle East. That's
kind of an intro to his work, I guess. And if
we're kind of talking about why do we care in
2025 about these medieval efforts, the personal
angle I would give to that is The government
school education I had actually did touch on
the crusades and it was just kind of basically
the crusades are bad. And the one that I remember
standing out the most in that summary from my
government school days was the children's crusade
where, you know, basically these children were
gathered together because they thought the purity
of their heart would give them victory. And they
just lead them out into the deserts and they're
preyed upon. Yeah, they get captured and made
slaves and worse. And so that's That's really
parallel to how I met Jonathan Edwards as a Puritan,
because the vision of the Puritans you get in
government school, or at least at the time that
I went through it, was, look at how dry and dour
and awful these people are. You read Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God. You may read The
Scarlet Letter. That and The Crucible are the
only two literary works that anybody really touches
with Puritans. You get this, what I now know,
incredibly biased. Very not even two -dimensional
one -dimensional misrepresentation of them. It's
very parallel to the crusade So then I get to
seminary and church history is not a major of
mine, but I'm an amateur in the sense of I think
History is the greatest story church history
is maybe the best version of it So I'm just regularly
reading church history for fascination and profit
of learning from previous generations And it
wasn't a lot different, you know the dominant
I went to a very conservative seminary, but the
dominant narrative about the crusades were, this
is a waste of time at best. And at worst, it's
this deep compromise of the church where she
would dare take up a sword. And so... And everybody's
assumption is always, well, they were trying
to convert under force of violence, which is
not typical, right? When you read Ibrahim's books,
that was not usually the deal. Well, and that
narrative too... I mean, really, the effect of
it is to say this version of medieval Christianity
is not much different from Islam. Yeah, right.
They just want to force people to do what they
say. And that's, that would be, in my opinion,
that's kind of the best version you're going
to get in a lot of modern education settings.
It's going to be, well, it was just a, it was
a traditional land war over resources and territory.
And the Christians were allied with each other
and the Muslims were allied with each other and
they just kind of fought. Religion was a pretext.
Um, and that's about they, I think that they
think that that comes across as more neutral.
So, well, and that, that's still, I think probably
if you could do a broad survey in some way, kind
of dominant. So some of our listeners may know
the name James White. He's kind of prominent
reform Baptist circles. He still is kind of selling
this narrative on social media. Anytime it comes
up, sometimes in response to what Ibrahim has
written. So somebody told me how great, it might've
been you, Terry could have been Nick Duncan.
Somebody told me how great. The book was in sort
of my online circles, people were talking and
raving about it. I read the book and I felt,
I think I mentioned this the last time we kind
of talked about this briefly. I felt this deep
sense of shame after Ibrahim puts all these primary
sources in front of me. It's not editorial. It's
not somebody telling me, look how bad these people
are. It's a robust presentation from primary
sources. And the conclusion I came away with
was these are some of the best Christians that
the world has ever seen. I was a monster for
just kind of following the false narrative about
them. So if you're wondering why you care, well,
friends, you may not care, but I would encourage
you to start caring by picking up these books.
Jason, what was your, is this consistent with
your education in the crusades when you were
coming up? Yeah, when I was coming up, it was
kind of a blight on, you know, the Christian
name and it kind of, it made me see Islam and
Christianity, it made me understand how people
could see them in the same vein. The more I learned
about it, it was really, like Jeff said, is eye
-opening. It helped me to understand the difference
at the core of the Christians of yesterday and
that they were truly doing it with a good heart.
Now we would say, I think, and Ibrahim even points
this out, these guys would have been what we
would consider today to be Roman Catholic. I
don't know if they would have used that term
or not at the time, but their beliefs would have
been consistent in a lot of modern Catholic beliefs.
So we would have doctrinal issues. If I had a
crusader here in the room, we would probably
dispute some things. That's true. Yeah, this
is far enough back though that, I mean, you know,
the Reformation isn't launched till the 1500s.
Right. some of these guys are double digit centuries
before. The Eastern Orthodox can claim them.
And for those of us who are Protestant, we all
kind of look back. Everybody loves Augustine.
Every tradition loves Augustine. These guys are
sort of in that same category. Yeah, I agree
with that. You get into their theology, they're
steeped in Catholic theology, but it was the
only Christian theology. Aquinas dominated everybody
in this era. And so, I guess the way I would
address that is, yeah, there's there's historical
doctrinal differences, but they had no source
of comparison. And what comes across in Ibrahim,
again, from primary sources, is that they had
a rich devotional relationship with Christ. As
evangelicals, we tend to think of that as more
of an authentic version of the faith. These people
were incredibly pious in the traditional sense
of the word and had a deep affection for Christ
and his people. Yeah, so let me ask this, this
is before we get into the details of these books
and the Crusades themselves. This kind of relates
to the Puritans as well, but how important do
you think that it is for Christians to have historical
heroes? I will come at this as like a history
of ideas issue. So, historical heroes, one of
the primary functions they serve is they give
credibility to the claims of our faith, that
this can be lived It's not going to be lived
perfectly, but men can attain growth in the faith,
right? Right. And here's where I do reverse reading
from the era that I've come of age in. Postmodernism
wants you to have no heroes. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody
is a hypocrite. Everybody is, you know. Well,
the revisionists is everybody that you liked
in history was secretly gay. Yeah. Everybody
was actually a monster in some way. Yes. They
were all frauds. Yes. And here's the thing, there's
enough examples of that in history that that
becomes credible if you read broadly. But having
actual heroes that you can document through primary
sources that were actually noble. One, again,
like I said, it's important for you as a Christian,
if you're struggling, you're in difficult spots
to say, oh yeah, after the apostles, there were
actually people who authentically lived the faith.
So that's a real encouragement. The other thing
is it's apparently important to the bad guys.
to make sure you have no heroes. So you should
be cultivating a garden of them. I mean, it's
easy for me to go, and I realize this may be
controversial to some of our listeners, and I
don't know that I reflect the opinion of the
room. I don't speak on behalf of these other
guys here, but Robert E. Lee is another example
of this, that he's supposed to be viewed entirely
as someone who supported slavery and therefore
has nothing of value to offer society ever again.
He should be Not just cast on the dustbin of
history, but he should be, you know, denigrated.
The statues have to come down. You read Robert
E. Lee, you read what people thought about Robert
E. Lee, and here again, you think, oh, this may
be one of the greatest men that the continent
I live on ever produced. And you can just tell.
I mean, they literally melted his statue down
and published the pictures of the molten statue.
It's a humiliation ritual. Well, they tore up
the plaque that stood over the grave of his horse.
Yeah. I mean, and then they put up some memorial
to like the horses that the Confederates were
mean to or something like that. I can't remember,
but it really is that ridiculous and petty. Well,
I'll touch on this later. Uh, some follow -up
questions, but just to mention the tactics that
Islam uses in this day and age, uh, they use
a lot of Marxist tactics. Uh, and that's, that's
one of them is, is rewriting history. Uh, you
know, putting it shining in a bad light. Yeah,
it's almost like you can see common family features
and satanic endeavors. Yeah, it totally is. We'll
get into that later, but yeah. So anyway, Terry,
just to come back and put a fine point on it.
Yeah, I think to what degree of importance, it's
not as important as gathering with your church
on the Lord's day. It's not as important as your
own devotional life and your family worship time,
but like right behind that, I think it, you know,
fourth slot. for all the reasons we've talked
about. It's incredibly important. You know, growing
up as a kid, you like action, action guys, soldiers
and cops and firemen. And some people grow out
of that and some people don't. And I've just,
I like guys that did action things. And so I've
had Christian heroes, guys like you mentioned,
Jonathan Edwards, right? Like he did some interesting
things, but I mean, mostly he was a preacher
and he lived his faith and he was a good hero
to have. And when I read Defenders of the West,
just thought these guys are action guys and they're
like this is what it really looked like to be
And you said you had a deep sense of shame because
you didn't arrive at this conclusion on your
own Like you you know, you felt like you kind
of had had been hoodwinked by bad. And betrayed
my brothers by letting people lie to me about
them. And I feel a sense of shame when I look
at that and think I'm not doing what they're
doing. And that's not to say that I want to go
take up sword and go, you know, butcher people.
But, you know, some of, you know, just to, we're
going to get into some of the names, but the
first guy, Wright Godfrey was a nobleman who
mortgaged his estate and, you know, spent great
amounts of money. He wasn't the only one. The
King, King Louis the ninth almost went bankrupt.
fighting the Crusades. And so these are guys
that believed in it. And it wasn't just that
they were willing to risk their skin, but they
were willing to risk their family's future and
livelihood in some cases. Their ancestral holdings.
They took great risk to do what they believed
was the right thing to do. So the Crusades and
I don't know if I, again, just to kind of echo
Jeff, I don't know if I echo everyone's opinion,
but I think I probably do. The Crusades were
a fully justified military intervention to protect
Christians. from predation by Islam that started
in 1090 or so, not long after the Norman invasion
of England, right? We kind of think of that almost
as prehistory now, but mostly led by Franks or
the French at that time. That's where all the
best knights were at the time. And when the French
were great. Yeah, they were. So our first guy
is Godfrey of Bouillon, led the first crusade
almost single -handedly, did all kinds of amazing
things. I don't know, do we want to share some
anecdotes about this? He almost cut a man in
half long ways with his sword. And somebody later
challenged him and said, is that story really
true? This is one of those Muslim dignitaries
that came to visit the kingdom of Jerusalem after
the first crusade was successful. And he was
like, yeah, that did happen. And he said, well,
you know, how sharp is your sword? And he was
like, well, it wasn't the sword. It was because
I practice and I'm super strong basically. So
he brought a camel. into the court there. And
he was like, can you chop off a camel's head
in one stroke? And he was like, yeah. So he did.
And he said, well, I think your sword is just
super sharp. And he's like, give me a different
sword. Didn't he maybe say, give me your sword?
Yeah. And so he gave the Muslim dignitary gave
him his own sword and he did the same thing to
a second camel. And now someone's crying about
the dead camels probably. Which by the way, Terry,
I was thinking the exact same thing. This goes
back to your point about how young Christian
men I mean, we've basically been told that kind
of masculine display of power is bad and dangerous.
Can't someone think of the camels? Yeah. You
have to look up. And here's the thing, I do look
up to Jonathan Edwards. I look up to John Owen.
I look up to Charles Spurgeon, but those are
like the only positive male role models. And
that you resonate with that and don't care if
people are freaking out about the camels. I would
just say it's a good thing. Yeah, that's correct.
Well, I'm sure they took them out and ate them,
you know, like they probably didn't go to waste.
I was about to say, my mind immediately goes
to, that's the best meat I've ever had is camel
hook. They're having a great barbecue after that.
In fact, Ibrahim might even make a comment to
that effect where it's like, yeah, they went,
they would have, you know, butchered them and
eaten them because that was a thing that was
done at the time. I don't know if anybody still,
I'm sure somebody does. I don't know if it's
common, but yeah, they would have eaten them,
I'm sure. So, you know, it would have been not
that different from saying, Hey, these cows are
ready for slaughter. Can you kill them in one
shot? And he probably would have been able to.
Which is a humane way to execute an animal. Yeah,
sure. You know, they'd never know what hit them.
And then they move on. So that's an example of
one of his feats. He killed a bear, right? And
they were out hunting. The Muslims had adopted
some scorched earth tactics. So they had to hunt
to supplement their nutrition for the army that
he was marching through the Anatolian mountains.
And he gets jumped by a bear and he stabs it
to death with a sword. I don't know if you guys
have ever stabbed just, I mean, have you ever
fought a bear with a melee weapon? I've not.
No, I've also seen the Revenant and I don't think
my chances are very good. Yeah. So this guy managed
to do it and I did get injured in the process,
but he recovered and was able to get back in
the fight out for a couple of weeks. Is my memory
wrong, Terry, that with him, maybe the bear had
first attacked one of his people. Right. It went
after one of his guys. And he's like, no, you
don't get to do that bear. Yeah. Yeah. He's a,
I mean, all these guys literally are kings. Yeah.
Is he also the one who leapt from the boat? Well,
that was Richard. That was Richard. Yeah. So
Richard the Lionheart. Richard the Lionheart,
by the way, is one of the ones that they want
to make the case for the fact that he was gay.
They're like, yeah, because I don't think he
had any male children or any children actually.
You know, I first met that paradigm with King
David, with Jonathan. Right. So like the militant
men that are heroes of the faith immediately
have to be closeted. Sure. That has to be how
it goes. Yeah. But yeah, Richard the Lionheart
was a true action here. In fact, Ibrahim shares
an anecdote. Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian from
Egypt and his family, his parents gave all their
kids our names. And so when he was getting ready
to be born, they were considering the name Richard,
but he shared that in the Middle East, Richard
would be kind of similar to a Christian naming
their kid like Judas or something like that.
because it's got so much, he's essentially a
boogeyman to them. He says in there that at the
time, and probably at events right after Richard's
time, that the Muslims would tell their kids,
you better behave or Richard's gonna get you.
Like that was like an anecdote that he shared
in the book that I thought was interesting, but
they thought he was invincible. And he might've
been, depending on how you want to define the
term. Yeah, I mean, they kind of run together.
I've read the book twice, but they kind of run
together. Was he the one who was accidentally
speared in the back and died from gangrene? No.
He died, I think he was hit by a crossbow bolt.
It was in France though, like they were on their
way back and he decided to sack some French castles
on the way. I think he had some beef with them
from before. And some nobody. I think it was
like a Coke or something, like picked up a crossbow
and just randomly shot it and hit him. It can
be kind of heartbreaking reading those stories
from a couple different angles. And on the theme
of them being invincible, it appears there is
a period in time where God's martial spirit is
so upon them that it's amazing. I mean, it's
just unbelievable what they accomplish. And then
for most of them, when that's over, the time
is done. It ends in the most, you just come away
going like, could we not have had one more run
Lord? You know what I mean? But they're struck
by a bolt or they get some kind of wasting disease.
You know, it's just, stuff that comes out of
nowhere. It really does seem like the Lord is
like, here's your invincibility star. And when
it ran out, you've exhausted yourself physically
and something inexplicable is going to take you
off the planet, you know? You got to read a new
one. If you like stories like that, because it's
loaded with those. I've started it just kind
of setting the scene for the listener. So I think
the primary abiding lesson is that these are
men who believe the faith. thought it was worth
defending, thought their people were worth defending
and put real, as you've already said, very sacrificial
actions. And these are not national friends,
right? Like these people are not, they're just
Christians who are ethnically different from
them. Yep. And have very competing interests.
Under different governments, yeah. And now some
of them were pilgrims, right? Like the Franks
had pilgrims that would go to the Holy Lands
and they would get messed with. But a lot of
it was the Christians in Armenia are calling
for help. And so the crusaders from Italy would
go. We're going to go help our brothers. And
that's where I was going to go. But I do want
to circle back, I think, to one other earlier
point. But where I was going to go is they're
so often left on an island by what should be
their allies. And we can talk about that more
in a minute. But to the listener who maybe still
isn't bought in on like the Crusades were a good
thing, you've got to understand that by the time
Constantine comes, he starts monumentalizing
the important areas of our faith historically.
And Abraham's introductory essay to the third
book is really good on this. The physical events
where the things Jesus did took place matter
to us as Christians because we claim to be a
historical faith. That Jesus died at a certain
place as an act of history that is just as historic
as the Twin Towers falling on 9 -11. Constantine
understood that, made memorials out of these
places. And Christians who wanted to be encouraged
in their faith and sort of reconnect with the
historical truth wanted access to those things.
And Christians held those lands until Islam comes
in as a predatory force. And in thievery takes
those lands or attempts to take those lands eventually
successful doing it. But this is not like what
you said earlier. It's not a petty land squabble.
These are significant factors in our faith. that
were subject to predation and these crusaders
rolled out to say, you just don't get to take
them. Yeah, a lot of people forget because the
world we live in, the Middle East is Muslim and
that's just the way it is, right? It wasn't always.
It wasn't though. That was the first place where
the Christian church took root. And so all those
areas that are now Muslim, North Africa, the
Middle East, the Near East, Turkey, that was
where the first Christian churches were. After
the, you know, after the destruction of Jerusalem,
the church scattered. Well, they scattered before
that because of the persecution in Jerusalem.
And that whole area was the cradle of our faith.
And not just the Holy Lands, but, you know, Alexandria
and Antioch and Syria and all these places that
we now think of as like, well, they're all in
Muslim hands and have been forever, but they're
not. That's all stolen land. So all these people
griping about your own stolen land, you can go
tell that to the Muslims. Well, and Terry, if
I can just kind of help my evangelical friends
here, this is within God's providence, but you
can see this in the biblical canon in Revelation
when Jesus dispatches these letters to the churches
of Revelation on a postal circuit. And he warns
them, if you don't repent, I'll take your lampstand.
And so, if you read history as God's providential
action, he uses pagan nations to judge his people.
And so, in unrepentance, I think probably Islam
is this force of judgment that comes to accomplish
the warning that Jesus gave. So what does a Christian
do with that? Well, one, you would want to be
repentant. right? You would want to say, well,
I've taken the warning seriously, I've repented.
You would also want to be the one who stands
against that judgment in every way you can, first
in repentance, second in, actually, this is our
family property. You know, I want to be faithful
in every sense of the word and reclaim it. And
if this still sounds odd to an evangelical audience,
I can't tell you how many conversations I've
had with missionaries who are working in Central
Asia, Turkey, places like that. And they say,
this is the cradle of our faith. There's no indigenous
church. My great passion is to reestablish a
church there. That is part and parcel of the
same spirit that animated the crusaders. They
wanted to reestablish what was recently taken
in that area. And so, if you think it's legitimate
to say, well, we want to go reclaim that area
for the gospel, you're in close fraternity with
the crusaders. I want to pose a couple of questions.
being in the spirit of the men of Issachar that
knew the times and knew what to do, I don't claim
to know what to do, but I sure want to look for
the things to do. Do you think that, and this
is a big question, do you think that Islam is
compatible at all with America? No, not at all.
I think Islam doesn't think it's compatible with
America. I'm in agreement with that, but I'm
just trying to pose these questions to help listeners
understand. So here, there you've got kind of
two things at play. One is that America is a
Christian nation and it's filled with Christians.
And the other one is that its structure, its
founding documents were all established with
Christian nation in mind. I mean, we see this
now with the Somalian issues, right? And we'd
be foolish to think that their religion doesn't
play a role in the fact that they think it's
entirely justifiable to steal everything, to
move in and conquer things. They're not killing
people. Well, I mean, there's crime, but they're
not, this isn't an army. It's totally fine to
them to just say, we're just going to take whatever
we can from whoever. And the Haitians, to be
fair, are not Muslim, but they do believe in
a false religion too. Now, there are Christians
amongst these ethnic groups, but it's really
naive to think that there's any kind of significant
minority of Christians amongst the Somalian refugees.
And certainly a minority that could have an influence
on the broader group. Right. Somalia is a Muslim
country and the people that live there are Muslims.
I want to play advocate for a second and just
say, okay, well, what about the argument of America
and the freedom of religion that we have here,
why isn't it? I mean, why doesn't that play into
this conversation? Well, because nobody understands
the freedom of religion in the right way. So
the First Amendment, which is what most people
are referring to, only bars the federal government
from establishing a specific denomination of
Christianity as a state church. Yeah. And listen,
lock in on that state. Church, right? So the
comparison would be Anglicanism, right? And that's
what they had departed from. So the Anglican
Church is the state church of England. And you
can see what shape that's in now, and the state
that England is in. But the idea was that the
minority groups were persecuted. And that's the
reason for the Great Migration that took place
in the 1630s, and the initial colonization that
took place from 1607 to 1620 or so. when the
first settlers came over from England, they were
non -conformists, what were derogatorily called
Puritans because they thought the Church of England
still had too much Catholicity in it. That's
the capital city. They thought it was too Romish.
So they didn't want to do that way, but they
were not allowed to work certain jobs, hold office.
Some of them had been jailed. They couldn't preach
within city limits. Right. They had restrictions
on their worship. And they were told that in
order to get around that, they would have to
preach according to the Anglican Book of Common
Prayer. Sorry, I'm going to say the Book of Church
Order, but that's a different thing. So they
didn't want to do that, even though the Book
of Common Prayer is loaded with good stuff. At
least the one Cranmer had a hand in. Right. They
didn't agree with everything, so they wanted
to purify it. That was where the name came from.
So they fled from there to Amsterdam. They were
there for a little while because Amsterdam did
have religious toleration, but they said, If
we raise our kids here, they're going to lose
their Englishness. They're not going to be Englishmen
anymore. We need to leave. Amazing, by the way.
Yeah. When you think about what they're doing.
Yeah. Think about what they're doing. So they
had been persecuted, hounded, bothered, run out
of town by their country, but they believed so
strongly in remaining Englishmen that they thought
we have to go from this relatively safe, established
civilized place to wilderness. in North America,
literal wilderness. There was nothing there except
for some natives that were nearby. They established
at great cost the American colonies. So fast
forward a little bit and our founders decided
that it's not a good idea for the federal government
to have the ability to decide that there must
be a particular state church that is endorsed
by the national federal government. It does not
and did not prohibit the states from doing that,
though, because at the time of the founding,
when the Constitution was signed, most if not
all of the states had official churches. And
the understanding was that it would be Christian
churches. So the idea that there would never
be any religions banned is a silly one. And we
know that because if somebody came to this country
and said, my religion authorizes cannibalism
and murder, we would not tolerate that. Child
sacrifice. Yeah. Now I say that we wouldn't tolerate
that. But these days I'm not as sure as I used
to be but clearly the founders knew that that
wouldn't be allowed So there definitely was things
off limits and they knew that this is kind of
like the free speech idea They had limits on
that too Even though you have the right to express
your opinion about what's going on You can't
you can't literally say anything that you want
any time you want to anyone you want There are
there are things that you'll be held accountable
for and so when we say freedom of religion people
think well That just means that no the government
can't do anything about anyone's religion, but
that's not what that amendment means Yeah, I'm
representing the more dense segment of the population
in this room. And so, the reason I highlighted
that they forbid the establishment of a state
church. Church is not a flippant stand -in synonym
for any religious organization. They didn't have
in mind that church was a synonym for mosque
or synagogue or whatever the Satanists gather
in to mock... you know, and make use of our warped
understanding of our legal documents to say things
like abortion is a sacrament for us. Which they
do, by the way. They say that. There was no category
for anything other than Christianity. I think
I mentioned this on a previous episode. I think
they had come to say, even a guy like Jefferson,
who we wouldn't call an Orthodox Christian by
any sense, that Christianity was the pinnacle
of moral and intellectual, it was the fountainhead
of those things. And it was the pinnacle of what
mankind had practiced as a religion. They really
didn't think we would ever back off of that conclusion.
They couldn't conceive of it. And so they're
not thinking that someday someone's going to
say, well, I have freedom of religion to build
a mosque here and in Dearborn ring the call to
prayer in a way that dominates the community.
They did not think that way. They privileged
Christianity. And they did privilege Christianity
and they understood it to be the true religion
and they believed that the state should promote
it. The other thing is that in this country and
in all the states separately, rape is illegal.
But if you were to ask a Muslim who's serious
about their faith, they would say, well, it's
only illegal if it's another believer. If it's
an infidel, it's fine. They're subhuman. You
can't live in a society that way with them. And
that's just one example. When our laws say things
like, you can't do that, but the Muslims say,
well, yeah, you can do that. It's part of our
religion. Somebody's going to have to give, right?
Well, I mean, there's several instances that
our morality is quite different. Even lying is
permitted in certain instances. It's about telling
the whole truth. You can tell partial truths.
You can deliberately mislead. Yes. Well, it's
even virtuous. In the Islamic system, you probably
know the terminology for it, but it's a virtue
to deceive non -Muslims. You can't have a society
that way. You can't do basic functions like exchange
goods that way. How do you have commerce with
someone who just has no context for private property
rights, fraud? Or being honest in the exchange
so that you know which value is being transferred.
You can't have a society. That's just anarchy
at that point. It's just whoever can put one
over on the other guy. And then you're into the
Hobbesian state of nature. It's just whoever
can take. Well, it's very advantageous to them,
because once it becomes a matter, kind of a Nietzschean
will to power, they're very happy to be like,
well, we're very happy to be brutal towards pagans,
and so we'll put a sword to your children's neck.
And they have an upper hand, in a sense, when
dealing with Christians, because we play that
different set of rules. Yeah, sure. Well, let
me tell you how the Templars solved that problem.
They did not believe them. Sure. Problem solved.
There's a few examples in the new book where
one of the critiques that the Templars would
get, because the Templars, if you think about
the historical understanding of them, if you
can get around the silliness of the Freemasons
and the Assassin's Creed video games and stuff
like that, the Templars had this kind of weird
mystique about them. And it's because they were
a religious monk order. They were very strange.
Even, even according to the day they were celibate
monks who spent all their time training and practicing
and building castles and stuff like that. So
they were, they were not what we think of as
monks, but they really were. That's kind of the
way they thought of themselves. But they had
been in the Crusades and in the Middle East.
That was their entire reason for being was to
defend Christians. They were established as an
order to defend Christians traveling from Joppa
to Jerusalem, which even after the first crusade
was like the Badlands. That's where all the Muslims
were still hanging out that the army hadn't eradicated
from the area. So it's kind of like road pirates.
They would pray upon pilgrim groups. And when
we say pray upon, we don't just mean rob them
and send them back home. It's murder, rape, slavery.
And so the Templars were asked to, well, they
weren't asked. I think they volunteered the first
couple of guys. They were poor. They were Crusader
veterans, but they didn't have a lot. They had
one horse between them. So the original Templar
logo is a horse with two riders because they
would alternate. I guess the horse got super
tired probably, but they eventually got funding
and help. And so the name, their actual name
is the Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ. And they
were given the temple on the Temple Mount as
a base. And so that's where the name Templar
came from. So anyway, years and years they've
been in the Middle East, years and years they've
been dealing with Muslims both in combat and
in diplomacy. And every couple of years, a new
group of crusaders would show up. Green could
be, didn't understand Islam, didn't understand
the different worldviews. And the Muslims would
try to deceive them in some way. Often it was
something like, we'll convert to Christianity
if you do this. They would try to move assassins
in. They were always trying to lie. And the Muslims
or the Templars just stopped listening to them.
There's one story in particular he told about
when they came once and said, we're going to
convert if you will agree to not attack us. And
the Templars weren't present for this meeting,
but the guy that what they were negotiating with
said, okay, sounds good. And on their way back,
the Templars attacked the Muslim envoys like
caravan and wiped them out. And they got in trouble
for it. And they were just like, he was lying.
We know that he was lying. Muslims and then they
probably had to explain this, this idea that
it's entirely okay for a Muslim to lie to an
infidel. And not just, I mean, they had, they
kind of had two, two. versions of this. There's
one that's just like outright lying to infidels
is fine, but even amongst themselves, it's acceptable
to mislead intentionally. And he gave, he gave
an example of this too. This is more of a, for
instance, he said, if you were to walk up to
a guy who has, you know, a hundred bucks in his
pocket and ask him for $5 to buy a sandwich,
he could say, man, I haven't got a penny on me,
which is technically true because he doesn't
have a penny, but clearly he has enough money
to give you to buy a sandwich if he wants, but
that's morally acceptable to them. So that's
kind of the other alternate version. It's technically
true. It's a technical truth, but it's deliberately
meant to deceive. And, and listener, we're not
promoting violence. I want to put that out in
the open. We are not promoting violence against
Islam or any other people group or whoever, but
we want to raise awareness of Islam and help
everyone understand the dangers that history
shows us about the true nature of what they represent.
Well, you know, I wouldn't affirm the cliche
that history repeats itself, but I would affirm
that history often rhymes. And so one of the
things that defenders did for me is it showed
that there's kind of nothing new under the sun
between the interactions between Christianity
and Islam. And so I mentioned earlier that often
these crusaders who are giving everything they
have, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and
financially, and are actually making good return
on that in retaking lands. They're left on an
island or they're betrayed by their fellow Christians.
And the way that this works out is they'll either
do it because, as Terry mentioned, these are
competing Christian nations. So while the Frank
is off doing this, his Germanic or English counterparts
like, oh, I can seize property. So then they
make him face a two -front war, two different
enemies. He doesn't want to fight the fellow
Christians, right? He's here defending Christendom.
So they put him in an awful position. Or the
one that's most disgusting is that, particularly
in the later Crusades, they do the math and they
say, we think Islam is going to win. Can we betray
our Christian brother to secure an advantaged
position for ourselves within the coming Islamic
order. Can we get some crumbs off the floor of
the table? Will you leave us alone? Can we maintain
our holdings? And so, they betray these brothers
in Christ and the dynamic we're just talking
about. The Islamic person after everything's
done and the actual threat he's afraid of is
off the table is like, haha, just kidding, we're
taking everything and we're destroying you, right?
Yeah. And you just read that and it's just crushing.
In part because the church has kind of been sold
this propaganda job about Islam, about the Crusaders.
We just repeat the same problems. Well, we can
all coexist in a tolerant society, things like
that. To your point, Jason, that's very convenient
to the Muslim. It's long -term catastrophic to
the Christian. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's
another thing that I wanted to talk about is
the tactics that they use. Right now, Christians
have the high ground, but we see that slowly
succeeding. I mean, the Midwest is being colonized.
I mean, New York mayor. All those things, you're
starting to see that progression. We have the
authority right now to right the ship. Okay,
I want to raise awareness of the true nature
of Islam and how incompatible that it is with
American ideals, with American moralism, with
all this to help people see that there is a danger
that is knocking at our door right now and we
better pay attention. These books, I highly recommend
them to everyone just because they will open
your eyes to truth and reality as it really is.
And it raises an awareness to the Christian to
say, hey, if you really want peace, Christianity
is the only way. And we need to put some things
in place in our country that will be looked at
by the Karens out there as harsh. Or dangerous
Christian nationalism. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's
just all silliness, but we're going to have to
do it or we are going to get overtaken. Well,
you were talking about tactics, and a tactic
is keep the Christians from fighting. And I don't
mean that in, like you said, we're not endorsing
violence, but keep the Christians from resisting.
Keep the Christians from voting for candidates
who will privilege the church, who will deport,
who will do a number of other things that can
be done to defend our shores from invasion. call
them Christian nationalists and say that this
is not a gospel issue, those kinds of things.
They've been so misled and so blinded to the
truth of these tactics that you're speaking of.
I really wish there was a way that we could open
folks' eyes to those tactics. Like I said, they
use a lot of Marxist tactics, communistic tactics.
They partner with these like BLM. Sure. That's
all. I mean, that's just textbook tactics that
they use. I really want to challenge the listeners
with these ideals and raise these questions of
what Islam truly is and is it compatible at all
with American ideals? Well, so that's another
benefit of reading Ibrahim. Listener, it's bracing,
it's disgusting, but what he documents is what
it looks like. When is long gains total control.
And so another thing that Islam is very committed
to, and in a sense is very good at is humiliating
the populations under their control. And so some
of this is like a poll tax that you just for
living in their lands and practicing Christianity,
you have to pay this exorbitant tax, right? That's
the mildest version of it. What they most often
did when they secured. ground held by Christians
is they would take nuns and children, I don't
want to be graphic on the podcast, but defile
them on top of religious monuments to Christianity.
Often defile them until the subject of the defilement
is dead, keeping young boys in perpetual slavery
of a particular sort, demanding that the populations,
the Christians under their control if you've
ever heard the term Janissaries, okay, you have
to give us a certain percentage or one whole
year's worth of the sons that you have produced
from your family lines. And they're either turned
into military forces on behalf of Islam or slaves
of a particular kind. Or both. On two of the
crusaders that are mentioned, notoriously, Vlad
Dracula was withheld from Islam, which is one
of the things that kind of sparked the conflict
because his brother was not. This is one of the
places where - When you say withheld, so Vlad
resisted their - Yeah, Vlad Dracul, the father,
he had two sons, one son he sent to be a Janissary,
and he was used by a Turk king. and was converted
and became an enemy of his brother later in life.
The other one was withheld and was not sent,
which caused some issues for him. And Vlad, now
known as Vlad the Impaler or Vlad Dracula, grew
up to be one of the greatest of the defensive
crusaders in history. And he's one who's been
much maligned thanks to a fiction book which
was written, I don't think with that intention,
but everybody now thinks of him as a monster.
he wasn't a vampire, but there's some interesting
things about where some of those myths may have
come from. If you read the story, it's pretty
interesting. Yeah. The Defenders of the West,
the second book has the chapter on him and that
chapter in sort of undoing the historical revisionism
is, and I would also say, Abraham's essays at
the beginning, they're worth the cost of the
book. I mean, you should pay whatever the cost
is just to read those two sections. To come back
to like, what does it look like when Muslims
established dominance? Well, We have this opportunity
to say, oh no, but they're much more Westernized.
They're much more Christianized. Christianity's
had an impact on them. There's more tolerant
Muslims. Right. All these narratives you've heard.
Talk to your neighbor who served in one of the
wars in the desert for the last couple decades.
I was listening to a podcast with a soldier who
served overseas. When we're in Afghanistan and
Iraq and those things, we made ally partnerships
with certain factions of Muslims versus others
that we were sort of you know, fighting more
directly. And this guy was testifying that like
when he would go visit the guard shack of the
group that he was, you know, working as an ally
with against these other factions, there would
be a young man kept in the guard shack for certain
kinds of entertainments. And it was just accepted.
And U .S. policy was we can't really say anything
about it. You just kind of got to look the other
way. So if you think that like Islam has progressed
beyond what we're talking about, friend, It's
pure fantasy. Well, it's it's kind of central
Yeah, if you read their books if you read their
their texts that this is this stuff is permitted
and it's done and You were you mentioned BLM
and some of the tactics and one of the interesting
things is that we know that the modern American
left likes Islam They get along they think they
get along well with them and a lot of people
on the right say well They just they hate gays
and they're gonna they would they would kill
you if they could which is probably true, they
would, but they don't really hate gays. They
don't think of homosexual activity the same way
that Americans do because they haven't, I don't
think adopted the whole framework of you are
gay or you are not gay. Like they don't really
buy into that. But if you're an infidel, you're
basically just a chunk of meat. Like they don't
think of you as a human. So that kind of defilement
is just not, they just don't think of it in the
same way that we would. Yeah. Now, you know,
like what happens in the streets of San Francisco,
they would probably put that to the sword. It's
a much more sort of in the confines of your own
walls that you do what you do with the young
men. But like Terry's saying, it's not, it's
not antithetical in the way we would assume as
Christians. Islam is not based. They operate
in a semi -peaceful manner until they have a
majority. That's what I've deduced over studying
these books and things. That is where we're heading.
Once they have an established majority, you will
see their tactics change. Well, and this is even,
you know, if, if you're dependent upon legacy
and corporate media for this, you're never going
to see it. But if you'll even dip your toes into
alternative media, YouTube. Twitter. Well, Ibrahim's
blog too. Yeah, Ibrahim's blog. If you'll just
do anything outside of the tight confines of
CNN, you're seeing in Dearborn, the mullahs have
already reached a level of comfort that they're
being very open about these things. That in Dearborn,
they're saying, we are going to take this over.
They're too weak to resist us. And that's late
stage. They feel so confident that they are already
showing we no longer feel like the deceptive
tactic is needful. Right. Another positive I
would say about Ibrahim, his essays. So I praised
him earlier because the proper work of the books
is just primary source history. And so I say
it wasn't editorialized, but he does do editorial
work in the introductory essays to his book.
And this harkens back to something Terry mentioned
earlier. By looking at the crusaders, he is very
critical helpfully of what we would call feminized
modern Christianity. that has this histamine
reaction against masculine energy and masculine
action. And so, Ibrahim, in those essays, he
talks as a Christian in a way that is polar opposite,
180 degrees away, antithetical from the kind
of rhetoric about manhood and faithful Christian
living that has dominated evangelicalism for
my adult lives. He talks positively. about masculine
pursuits of the glory of Christ and sacrificing
on behalf of Christ, not just to have the richest
quiet time. And I don't want to throw off on
having a rich quiet time. That's a good thing
to pursue, but that's like the sum total of what
men can attain to in modern evangelicalism. And
Ibrahim points out how we look so bizarre and
even maybe obscene compared against the dominant
spirituality of Christianity globally and throughout
history. We are these really weird believers
in this age if you have any sense of historical
perspective And so that's one of the things I
appreciate about his essays that actually Getting
up to stuff positively for the Lord's glory is
something that should be recovered Yeah, yeah,
I can remember when the defenders of the West
came out around that time. I had an article for
American Reformer that was about, it was basically
written to explain why I thought Christian men
should be lifting weights, like why they should
pursue physical strength. It was around that
time that there was a bit of a Twitter controversy
about that or X or whatever. And then it was
fascinating to watch the argument unfold because
there was, it was what you were saying. It was
essentially pietism versus, you know, people
who would like this book basically. And it was
like, this is a waste of time. Christian men
don't and it was always guys that you could tell
like had never picked up anything heavier than
a number two pencil. You know, they may have
felt bad about it or whatever. And you can read
the article. It's on American reformer. I would
not say that it's a thing that makes you more
holy. Although I do think that that having the
discipline to pursue physical strength and power
is a useful tool and obtaining the discipline
needed to pursue holiness. Well, that's kind
of the way I would see it. Furthermore, it makes
you more resistant to injury, makes you live
longer, puts your health in just a better state
in general. And so those things are things that
we can do and the church has just not honored
that in my lifetime. This has been kind of contemporary
on social media, but I'll give a very specific
example. So, I love John Piper. I have benefited
tremendously from John Piper's work in the kind
of devotional and theological sense. John Piper
also is famous for saying things like, if someone
broke into my house and was attacking my family,
I would not defend my family because that person,
if I killed them, they may be a Christian. And
I know my family are believers. And so... Or
they may not be a Christian. And the attacker
may not be. And so, I may send him to hell and
my family will have a chance. Right? And so,
I love John Piper when he's talking about theology
proper, but... I mean, I just can't stress enough
how weird evangelicalism in my adult age is.
Because I think normal people see a man saying
that and they have this visceral, what are you
talking about, dude? Right? I do. But evangelicalism
has cultivated this bubble where somebody says
something like that and doesn't immediately lose
all credibility. Well, they say, oh, that's so
holy. Yeah. It's seen as spiritual attainment.
I think that's sinful. Not everybody has to agree
with that. But when I see a verse that says that
a guy who doesn't take care of his family is
worse than an unbeliever, I think that includes
protecting them, particularly if you're the man
of the house. Absolutely. But that has been stripped
out of the dominant evangelicalism of my day.
And this is what we're talking about, that Abraham
is so refreshing. Cause he just shows you all
these Christians. Abraham, by the way, is super
jacked if he didn't know that. Yeah, former powerlifter,
right? Yeah, I think so. So he knows, you know,
this is a guy who's experienced, I mean, he probably
has been through kind of what we're discussing.
Like I look around and I see a bunch of pencilnecks
or guys that are just, you know, grossly overweight
and they're our spiritual leaders and supposed
to be our luminaries, you know, for all the benefit
John Piper gave us. You look at that guy and
you're like, he's not super fit. Now he's an
older guy. Now you compare that to somebody like
John MacArthur, right? Who was like a division
one college athlete and was in really good shape
right up until the time that he had to go. We
can have discussion about providence of God and
the nature of when we die, but MacArthur took
care of himself physically and he allowed him
to have a very long ministry, a very fruitful
ministry. He was with it. up until, you know,
he's preaching, like not long before he had to
kind of go down and that was that. And I'm thinking,
Ibrahim's lifting weights, he's a Christian,
he's looking around going like, you know, who
are my heroes? Who can I look up to that has
done things that I respect? And we have to make
sure that the things we respect are in alignment
with what the scripture teaches. But you look
at the crusaders and if you're a guy who thinks,
you know, I like guns and I like lifting weights
and I like eating red meat. You may not be as
into Jonathan Edwards, and Jonathan Edwards could
have been the manliest guy ever. I don't really
know him that well. But when I look at a guy
who could chop a camel's head off in one stroke,
I'm impressed by that. I respect that. And then
I find out that this guy's a true believer, a
man who laid his life on the line, a man who,
when they won the crusade, they tried to make
him King of Jerusalem. And he said, I will not
wear a crown of gold where my savior wore a crown
of thorns. And so he took the title of Lord Protector
of Jerusalem. Would follow that man into battle
absolutely if he was in here. Yeah, like I said,
we're going to Dearborn now again. We're not
advocating that but You know you listen to people
like that This is a guy who's lived it and I
think I can't help but think Ibrahim's looking
around not at a loss for who a hero can be and
he turns to history and he finds these guys and
it just Captures his imagination and did mine.
Yeah. Well, I'll just bolster that point Terry.
So he's Coptic, right? And Coptic is sort of
in fellowship with the East under what we would
call Eastern Orthodoxy. I don't think anybody
who knows me thinks I'm some kind of doctrinal
squish. I draw pretty tight lines doctrinally.
But the Coptics, again, is family history. It's
part of their story to be on the front line of
interactions with Islam. So if you can think,
you know, I'm assuming because we're Southerners
in the room, there's a real sense, at least in
my circles, that the Civil War isn't really history,
that it still has a presence in our lives and
our culture for Southerners. Maybe you don't
relate to that listener, but I'm just telling
you, that's part of my sense of myself in history.
Well, for the Copts, interaction with Islam is
still sort of that deal. And so, while I mean,
they're still there dealing with it. Right. So,
doctrinally, I've got some real significant criticisms
of Coptic Christianity. But a few years ago,
there was a video that went viral. There were,
I think, seven Coptic Christians, and I think
they were in orange jumpsuits. They'd been kidnapped
by militant Islamists, or that's probably redundant.
They'd been kidnapped by some of their neighbors,
and they were on a beach, and they were commanded
to renounce Christ. You know, to a man, they
basically died saying, Jesus Christ is Lord,
and they were executed on the beach. If that
kind of faith, we don't have as evangelicals
a vision for conquering Christianity. But we
do have a vision of martyrdom Christianity that
we still see as glorious. These are the Coptic
Christians. This is the tradition that he's in.
And so, it's not just a, I want to be a Chad
who can arm wrestle everybody into submission.
But these are people who, if they have the opportunity
to conquer and establish good things for Christianity,
they do that. If they're in a position where
they can't and they're being pressed to renounce
Christ or die, they choose death. I don't know
how you can't gravitate to that kind of faith.
And I think it speaks incredibly well of their
faith. Again, where I would say on paper, doctrinally,
I think there are real questions with your understanding
of the faith. But if you die in the face of a
sword that's going to, you know, end your life
right there, and the last thing you say on earth
is, Jesus Christ is Lord, I think the Spirit
of God is present there. And I'm going to give
you the benefit of the doubt. And that's the
kind of faith that I hope to cultivate in myself
and among my people. Abraham's a really great
gateway. No, I'm not trying to tell you to become
Coptic. I'm not trying to tell you to become
Easter Orthodox. I would want the Coptics to
all be Baptist if I could make... Yes, exactly.
And they would be spiritually healthier if they
were. But nonetheless, this is a vision of Christianity
that's historic, global, and gets down to the
roots of who the person is. As an evangelical,
you could be like, yeah, I can see why that would
be helpful to me. Yeah. So the overall narrative
of the Crusades has been told to us wrong, and
it was fought in defense of Christian pilgrims.
and later Crusades were fought in defense of
Christian lands that were being actively invaded.
So once Islam holds the Holy Land, they use it
as a launching base into other Christian lands.
They move into Europe and then the Spaniards
have to long, prolonged, drawn out, reconquista
as it's known. where they were whittled down
to just a handful of mountain peaks, basically,
and they came back and conquered the Iberian
Peninsula and sent the Muslims back to North
Africa. If you took one thing away from this
version of the Crusades, it's that the Christians
were fighting to protect themselves and their
fellow Christians from Muslim aggression, which
was rampant and unchecked otherwise. Yeah. I
just think today you would get so much kickback
if I'm imagining the the Twitter replies and
things, but they're most, there are mostly peaceful
people. Right. Sure. Just like the, uh, George
Floyd summer of love was mostly peaceful protests,
same, same energy. Yeah. And I just, I just have
to challenge that. I just have to challenge that.
Well, historically they've been peaceful very
seldom. Strategically. Yeah, and in strategic
times. Yeah, you know, treaties that were struck
with them during the Crusades were always temporary.
The Crusaders knew that. I mean, this is not
just Islam either, like pagan peoples do this.
I've been reading about John Sevier's history.
Sevier was a very seasoned Indian fighter in
Tennessee back when it was still prior to its
statehood even. And there's an anecdote from
that where he had some Cherokee approach him
up with a treaty that they had been in conflict
with. And he knew immediately that the fact that
they wanted him to sign a treaty was just because
they wanted to buy time so that they could mount
a larger attack. And his experience with them
taught him they will not honor this treaty. They're
just going to buy time. So he went ahead and
signed it. And he didn't violate it, but he built
up his forces and strengthened his forts in the
meantime, knowing that the hammer was going to
fall somewhere because they needed some time
to gather up more warriors to come at him. And
he was right. This is a thing that non -believers
are okay with, is just lying to everyone so that
they can win a strategic. Advantage. So what
can we do as Christians to help folks understand
and even what can we implement in our communities
or even in our government to further this action?
The first thing that I would take as a lesson
from the crusaders is that the best defense is
a good offense. So conservatives historically
are very retreatist in the sense that we want
to build families. We want to build livelihoods.
We want to be about the good business of the
language of scripture is a quiet and peaceful
life. What that means is we want to be left alone
and we basically fight only for the goal of being
left alone. But there's a maxim that's true.
The side that wants to win is always going to
beat the team that wants to be left alone. And
so the crusaders tell you that you cannot take
a purely defensive posture. And I want to add
the qualification we've provided a thousand times.
Nobody here is calling for picking up arms. What
we're calling for is something like common sense
legislation that says this is allowed and this
is not. And if there is any kind of physical
conflict there, it's exercised justly under the
auspices of the just government, the rightly
established government. that has authority in
the region who is given the sword for just such
a restraining of evil, right? To the general
point, retreatism is defeatism and Christianity
has to recover a spirit of holy aggression. I
think we have to identify the threat and I think
Islam is a threat of sorts. I'm not saying it's
a physical threat right now. But we need to realize
the realistic potential of what it will grow
into. and to stave that off. So it may be something
that a government needs to take a new stance
and consider it a type of terrorism. Sure. Right.
I mean, there's other versions of this too. So
like militant Hinduism, the kind that's often
sort of replicating the horrors of Islam or in
conflict with Islam because it's two similar
forces fighting. They're wrecking statues in
Houston. Right. We've simply got to get past
the idea that we can only care to be left alone.
So to that point, to identify the threat, Jason,
one, do the primary source history we're talking
about, read the Quran with the assumption that
the people who are reading the Quran as their
primary religious text are just taking it at
face value. They're not looking for some metaphorical
reading of the text. Okay, read that, then go
read Abraham's historical record from the primary
sources and just get to know what we're talking
about. Don't just assume some intellectually
vacuous late stage Western liberalism that nobody
cares about anything, go read their primary sources
and assume that they believe it and see if that
makes sense of how they act. And then maybe you
can draw some conclusions about what they represent
as a four -centre society. Right. You know, speaking
of being educated, a lot of Americans need to
be educated on what our founding documents actually
mean. You know, we brought that up with the First
Amendment. So many people assume pluralism is
just the thing that we have to have because that's
what the law says when it doesn't say anything
of the kind. And the American tradition has in
the past lots of precedent for saying, no, that
religion is not allowed here. We're not going
to do that. And furthermore, we're going to protect
the religions we do have. There's a very famous
case where someone blasphemed, I can't recall
exactly what was said, but I think it was blasphemed
Christ and it was done intentionally to insult
someone and to cause a physical confrontation
to occur. And that man took that case to the
Supreme Court after he was charged with the offense
of blasphemy. And the Supreme Court found in
favor of the prosecution and said, you can't
do that. This is not new. And our post -war consensus
world, everyone just says, well, you just got
to put up with whatever religions say that they
want to do and whoever wants to be here and however
they want to act and practice because the First
Amendment. But that's not the founders intent
for the First Amendment. And it never was. And
it wasn't their understanding when they wrote
it. And it wasn't their practice for decades
after they wrote it. So American reform is a
good place for this because there's lots of commentary
on the specifically this issue and just reading
the primary documents, reading what the founders
commentaries on those documents were and what
they meant. So there's no restriction against
the government saying that can't be done here
religiously. And to kind of piggyback on that,
to go back to way earlier in the episode where
you talked about the charters of the original
colonies, there's going to be an established
church for this colony, but it can't impose itself
upon other people and stuff like that, right?
Like they're privileging Christianity and the
colonies were going to be sort of these areas
where if you're Anglican, gravitate to the Anglican
one. Maybe that's Maryland. Go to Virginia. Right.
Whatever that is. And these were places where
you could have... Maryland was the Catholic colony,
I think. Catholic, okay. So you can have your
preferred flavor of Christianity. You just can't
have a federal government that says, this is
the only form. Kind of harkening back to my government
education, Rhode Island is seen as the Petri
dish from which American religious liberty springs
from. And it's often foisted on Baptists because
Roger Williams is this strange character in history,
both American and church. He started at high
church, maybe Anglican, Catholic, something like
that. he ends his life in what looks like apostasy.
But for this brief window, he's in something
that we might say is similar to Baptist theology.
And that's when he found Rhode Island. And Rhode
Island - Because he had been kicked out of everywhere
else. Yes. And Rhode Island does not have, it's
the unique colony that does not have the established
church identified. So it's seen as this open
-ended religious environment, anything goes.
It's kind of a libertarian thing. Right. That's
how you're sold. But if you go read the Rhode
Island Charter, which you can do, it's actually
kind of hard to find, but if you read the original
Charter, it specifies in the Charter that Rhode
Island, part of the reason it's granted status,
is for the conversion of the heathen. And so
what that Charter says is Rhode Island, for whatever
greater degree of religious liberty it had in
the modern sense, its express purpose was to
bring Indians, Native Americans into the Christian
faith. Even the one that sold to you, as sort
of the most egalitarian religious colony was
privileging Christianity and expecting the pagans
to be converted through it. He just can't stress
this enough. The narrative you've been sold about
religious liberty is inconsistent with the primary
sources from the junk. There's nowhere that's
present. Yeah. And you know, if you're a person
out there who clings to the founding documents
above everything else and thinks that they justify
pluralism, in this kind of unlimited sense, you're
going to find that if unlimited pluralism is
what is allowed, then those founding documents
are going to be gone with it. They're just going
to be erased because the Muslims, hypothetically,
if they were to conquer, they would not govern
by those. They're not leaving a Catholic colony.
They have Sharia law. Yeah, they've got their
own system for that. And it's essentially fascistic.
I mean, you see it. We have countries. They've
got some monarchies. We've got Iran, which who
knows what's going on with them now. While we're
recording this, Iran's in the middle of what
might be a revolution, but they have a religious
kind of fascistic system and that's just the
way they run things. Well, and I was having a
conversation with a former student recently about
this. You think about even sort of a modern,
idealized Muslim city like Dubai. So it's like
Tony Stark hometown, you know, the rich and powerful
go there for a playground. Everybody there knows.
You don't have anything bad to say about the
prophet. For all the things that they're willing
to indulge Western access. A lot of that city
was built by slave labor, by the way. Sure. They
will not play around even in sort of the most
liberalized form of their religion for monetary
access and whatnot. They will not play along
with the idea that you have liberty to make fun
of Muhammad as someone who engaged in under...
I won't get into all of the details. Muhammad's
a deeply moral figure. but you can't say that
in Dubai. You can go and drink and have fornication
and whatnot. They'll let you do that, but they
will not let you mess with their religion. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm going to just throw one other one in
there that listener again, I have to qualify.
Like this is the opinion of Jeff Robb, maybe
not the whole miniviscar, but there's a concept
called the friend -enemy distinction that is
an intellectual tool under discussion in what
we'd call the dissonant right. So like, if you
think about maybe the people who are most enthusiastic
about JD Vance, they're talking about the friend
-enemy distinction. And Muslims practice friend
-enemy distinction really well. Modern American
evangelicals do not. So let's say JD Vance is
having an interview with a hostile media figure.
And in that interview, he uses a four -letter
word. Nobody here is going to endorse using vulgar
language. Nobody here is enthusiastic about that,
promoting that, right? But the friend -enemy
distinction would say, JD is a friend, and he
may have made an error there. The hostile media
member who's interviewing him is an enemy. And
so we're not going to criticize JD in the way
the enemy would, because it bolsters the enemy
who would destroy us along with JD if he could.
We may have a private conversation with a guy
like JD and be like, man, really, we need you
to kind of button up your language. But what
we're not going to do is leap on on his failure
there as an opportunity to show how how superior
we are in our pietism, how superior we are in
not being that kind of Christian in a way that
feeds the desires of the people who would just
destroy all of us if they could. And I think
one of the things that Abraham's work suggests
to us, what the Crusaders suggest to us, is that
we should remember who our friends or enemies
are and deal with them in those appropriate categories.
So, listener, one thing, this is post crusaders,
but we have to talk about it. The crusaders would
have been happy to have these, I think. But you
go ahead. Jason, who I wish you could see the
studio we're in. Jason is just this guru of tech
and audio and whatnot. So we just come in and
talk. Jason does all this other incredible stuff.
Well, this other incredible thing he's done is
that he has brought us these bare knuckle work
gloves. And we talked on previous episodes about
like wanting to get a pair or whatnot. So he's
brought them in and I have used a lot of work
gloves in my life and these things are incredible.
Uh, the material is that's bison. Yeah. Okay.
Of course it's the superior material. If you've
ever gotten into a high end vehicle and then
had to get into your car. You're just kind of
depressed by... I was a valet in college, so
I was always depressed. I mean, you shut a Volvo
door and you're like, oh, that thing's going
to withstand an atomic bomb. You shut your geo
trackers door and you're like, I would be very
happy if this thing survives the potholes on
the way home. And that's the experience of dealing
with these bare knuckle gloves. Like the first
time I put them on, I thought, Oh, this is, this
is what a work glove feels like. This is what
a work glove feels like. I bet I won't wear a
hole in this by the end of the week. So we have
the D 451 bare knuckle work glove, brown leather,
some, uh, black highlighting on the black trim,
black trim on the fringe and in the knuckles.
These are amazing, Jason. Yeah, that bare knuckles,
they keep, they continue to impress me. So listener,
if you want to get yourself a pair, you go to
their website and put in, uh, is a car as a keyword
and you can get 15 % off. So you'll be supporting
the show too. So you get to get a good pair of
gloves, support a good company and help us. Yeah.
I don't know that Godfrey had the opportunity
to wear bison work gloves, but in my head he
did now, like when I pictured Godfrey. Chopping
down in one stroke a camel. He's going to be
wearing like get my gloves bare knuckle D 451
gloves Yeah, and so they're their website. It's
bear. It's in the animal be a are knuckles Spelled
the usual way so I've got a pair in my hand and
I've had them on my hand throughout the episode
occasionally So if you hear any weird squeaking,
it's me putting gloves on just because I wanted
to fidget with them kind of like you when you
put money like I need to go rebuild a fence.
Yeah. I'm going to find something to do with
these. And it needs to be something with jagged
edges. And I want to put up barbed wire screens.
I've got a huge pile of bricks. I have to move.
I wasn't kidding about that. So I'm looking forward
to using these to do that. Well, thank you listener
for joining us. I hope you got something out
of this conversation. I know I did. We will talk
again soon.