This morning I appeared for about 30 minutes on "The Peter Boyles Show," KNUS AM 710, Denver, to discuss the Crusades in light of a Colorado Christian high school deciding to do away with their Crusader logo.  I explained the 11th c. AD geopolitical and theological (both Christian and Muslim) backgrounds and related them to today's situation.  May I suggest listening to "Music of the Crusades" after my radio lecture. 

  A great soldier but a lousy king....Richard the Lion-heart crusading. 

 

 

 

The entirety of the Fox News Channel special "War Stories: Fighting ISIS" is now available online.  I first come on at 4:20, then appear periodically throughout the rest of the show. commenting on ISIS' Islamic bona fides, eschatological motivations and who needs to de-legitimize the group. 

 Urban renewal--aka destroying crosses and churches--courtesy of ISIS. But no, they're not Islamic at all! 

Yes, you read that right: Middle-earth," not the "Middle East."  The former is one of my great passions, along with the latter and Islamic studies.  I've written the first of two volumes historically analyzing the politics of Tolkien's world, which is available now (e-books are readable right away; hard copies will ship April 29, 2016).

  

 The second volume analyzes warfare in Middle-earth, across 7,000 years of Tolkienian history (so not just the late-Third-Age battles of the Lord of the Rings movies).  It's entitled Bright Swords and Glorious Warriors: A Military History of Middle-earth and I'm writing it now; Eru willing, it will be out late 2016/early 2017.  

Fortunately, you won't see this picture in either of the books (sorry, ISIS):

 

(AP) Last month, construction workers in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca demolishing a medieval mosque to make room for a new Ritz-Carlton aimed at high-end Muslim pilgrims uncovered fragments of an old Qur’an, the holy book of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.  Before it could be disposed of properly by Saudi clerics, several of the workers—apparently on orders from their employer, Bin Ladin Construction—smuggled the pages out of the Kingdom and delivered them (after, reportedly, huge bribes) to the newly-created  “Institute for the Study of the Noble and Peaceful Qur’an” at al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

 The fact that the Qur'an fragements survived this blast is nothing short of a miracle! 

Islamic scholars and Qur’an experts studied the surviving pages round-the-clock for several weeks and were shocked to discover that this text—which had somehow survived the burning of “heretical” versions of the Qur’an under the reign of the third Caliph of Islam, Uthman, in 652 CE—apparently includes a heretofore-unknown 115^th sura, or “chapter,” of the Qur’an.  Entitled Sura al-Mazzah, it’s one of the shortest chapters but based on intense textual study these experts have determined that it is almost certainly the last, chronologically, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad—thus making it binding under the exegetical doctrine of naskh in which the later revelations from Allah to Islam’s founder are the more authoritative ones. 

 Dr. al-Hallaj [sic], in happier times. 

However, it is what Sura al-Mazzah says which, if verified and accepted, could prove explosive for not just Muslims but the entire world. The key verse translates as “O Believers! Believe not that ye should kill the infidels but rather know that the Iblis [Satan] was whispering to God’s apostle for too long, telling him [Muhammad] falsely.  Know that indeed Islam is a religion of peace and all the verses before this one are wrong desires injected by Iblis.  Therefore heed not the lying admonitions to swords, but rather heed the Christians, whose Lord `Isa truly is….”  At this point the text breaks off.  

The lead researcher on this project, Qur’an  expert Dr. Mahmud al-Hallaj, mysteriously and abruptly committed suicide last week.  Several other key members of the project have also disappeared.  The remaining experts, as well as the Qur’anic fragments themselves, are said to be under the protection of President al-Sisi’s personal bodyguard.   How the government of Egypt intends to proceed is unknown, but ISIS, al-Qaida, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood have all vowed to attack Egypt if this claim is not immediately retracted and the manuscript fragments burned in a fire “hotter than the blazes of hell and damnation itself.”  

President Obama, when asked in a press conference about the findings, remarked that, if true, they showed  that “I was right all along” and that “Republicans were wrong” about Islam.  And that if Iblis had a modern incarnation, it would be as Donald Trump.