Isis: The Origins of Violence Page #2

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Christians no less than Muslims.

But Isis are raising a lot of ghosts

from the past.

We've just gone through Vienna.

Muslim armies came this far twice.

We've passed a town where they

massacred everyone.

And the further east across Europe

you go,

the more people remember

things like this.

It's nightmarish...

and it's supposed to be.

Isis have a user's manual.

It's called

The Management Of Savagery.

"We need to massacre others,"

it says.

"Hostages must be eliminated in a

terrifying manner."

The circumstances we are now in

resemble those faced by the

first Muslims.

Istanbul,

a city that has always been in the

crosshairs of the titanic rivalry

between Christendom and Islam.

But it is also a city that shaped

the very beginnings of Islam.

In the early 8th century it was a

Christian capital, Constantinople.

And an Arab war fleet was laying

siege to its walls.

Constantinople, the capital of the

Christian Roman Empire,

the greatest city in the world,

the great object of Muslim desire.

The Arabs believed that they had

been promised the world by God,

so they wanted to reach out

and take it,

probably more than anywhere else in

the world.

And they did that twice, and twice

they failed to do it.

They were so tantalisingly close,

but they couldn't quite get

hold of it.

And so, in the face of that failure,

they went back to first principles.

They asked themselves, "What should

we be doing here?"

And they decided that what God

wanted was struggle.

Jihad.

So this is where the notion of jihad

really begins,

before the walls of Constantinople.

In the Koran, jihad meant the effort

required to be a good Muslim.

But defeat here gave it a much

sharper meaning.

Sacred violence.

Stories began to be told of

Muhammad,

that he believed those who died

fighting for Islam

would receive the

greatest rewards in heaven.

The sword scrapes away sin.

As a result, those who died here

were cast as martyrs.

In here we've got the tomb of...

...supposedly, an Arab soldier

in the first Arab campaign

that was sent

against Constantinople.

And he is supposed to have died

here, so he ranks as a martyr.

He died for his faith.

And the... ...sight of his...

...tomb was discovered, supposedly,

after the Muslims had conquered

Constantinople in 1453.

So many centuries afterwards.

And... ...you might think...

...this was quite a convenient, not

to say improbable, discovery.

Nevertheless, this tomb in here

commemorates one of Islam's

earliest jihadis.

With the Ottoman conquest of

Constantinople,

the city became the capital

of a great Islamic civilisation.

Its sultans ruled as caliphs,

successors of Muhammad himself,

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