JIHAD, war in the path of Allah with the objective of converting, killing, or else subjugating and taxing the “infidel,” is Muhammad’s most significant single contribution to the world history. It defined Islam in its earliest days, it has defined the relations between Islam and other religions and cultures ever since, and it continues to define the mindset of Islam today. Muhammad’s followers and successors were accustomed to living by pillage and the exploitation of settled populations. Islam provided a powerful ideological justification for this mindset, a justification inherently global in scope and totalitarian in nature.

The view of modern Islamic activists, that “Islam must rule the world and until Islam does rule the world we will continue to sacrifice our lives,” has been solidly rooted in traditional Islam ever since the early divine sanction of violence that came to Muhammad in Medina: “O Prophet! Rouse the Believers to the fight,” the Kuran orders, and promises that twenty Muslims, “patient and persevering,” would vanquish two hundred unbelievers; if a hundred, they will vanquish a thousand. (8:65) Allah further orders the faithful to fight the unbelievers and be firm with them, (9:123) “and slay them wherever ye catch them.” (2:191) The end of the fight is possible only when “there prevail justice and faith in Allah”—everywhere. (2:193)

Muhammad made Islam different from Judaism and Christianity in creating the foundations for a theocratic universal state with unlimited aspirations. From his second year in Medina on, Islam combined the dualism of a universal religion and a universal state and became “Islam’s instrument for carrying out its ultimate objective by turning all people into believers.” Muhammad postulated the fundamental illegitimacy of the existence of a non-Muslim world. Jihad did not necessarily mean permanent fighting, but it did mean a permanent state of war. Only after the universal Islamic Empire is established, the notion of an “inner” jihad—one’s personal fight against his sinful desires—may come into play. “My livelihood is under the shade of my spear,” from booty and poll tax, Muhammad declared, and the faithful followed his example. They could contemplate tactical ceasefires, but never its complete abandonment short of the unbelievers’ abject submission. This is the real meaning of Jihad. (4:76)

The conquered peoples were “protected persons” only if they submitted to Islamic domination by a “Contract” (Dhimma), paid poll tax—jizya—and land tax—haraj—to their masters. The resulting inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis steadily eroded the non-Muslim communities, but in this age of victimology the persecution of Christians by Muslims has become a taboo subject in the Western academe. 13 centuries of discrimination, suffering and death of countless millions, have been covered by the myth of Islamic “tolerance.”

On its own admission Islam stands or falls with the person of Muhammad, a deeply flawed man by the standards of his own society, as well as those of the Old and New Testaments, both of which he acknowledged as divine revelation; and even by the new law, of which he claimed to be the divinely appointed medium and custodian.

The problem of Islam, and the problem of the rest of the world with Islam, is not the remarkable career of Muhammad per se, undoubtedly a “great man” in terms of his impact on human history. It is the religion’s claim that the words and acts of its prophet provide the universally valid standard of morality as such, for all time and all men.

The cartoon controversy confirms the validity of Bat Ye’or’s warning (in 1993) that no “Europeanization” of Islam is on the horizon anywhere: there is no move or gesture that would be expressed in “a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism, an acceptance of the principle of equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, a retroactive recognition of the rights of the peoples decimated and degraded by the system of dhimmitude, and an attitude of moral humility—a necessary stage on the path toward reconciliation between peoples. We are light years away from such a development.”

The experience of France last November and Denmark today raises the issue that America, too, ought to ponder: how far is a receiving country expected to go in order to accommodate the religious, moral, and political demands of often unassimilable and hostile immigrants? And why should it do any such thing at all? A further question (courtesy of Chilton Williamson) is where exactly one-billion-plus members of the biggest cult on earth get off telling the rest of us their “prophet” must not be criticized under pain of death: “It is, of course, an insane position. Has any other ‘religion’ in the history of the world made such a claim? Not to my knowledge anyway.”

Our judgment on Muhammad rests on evidence of his followers and faithful admirers—and those who rage against the Danish cartoons can scarcely complain if, even on such evidence, the verdict of the civilized world goes against their “prophet.”

That verdict, once it is passed—and it will be passed—will make the gentle mockery of Muhammad in those cartoons appear as inappropriate as it would be inappropriate today to lampoon Adolf Hitler for his out-of-wedlock trysts with Fräulein Braun, or for his inability to control flatulence.