A Century Before Donald Trump, Churchill Warned About Islam

A century before GOP front runner Donald Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States, Sir Winston Churchill diagnosed the dangers of radical Islam.

In September 1898, the then-23-year-old Churchill was one of the officers leading the 21st Lancers cavalry charge that secured a British victory over 19th century Islamic terrorists at the Battle of Omdurman in Sudan.

Some 13 years earlier Muhammad Ahmad, “the Mahdi of Allah,” had established the first modern Islamic caliphate governed by sharia law when he beheaded British General George Gordon after his dervish jihadi army captured Khartoum. Only superior British military power stopped Ahmad’s successor, Ibn Muhammad, from spreading the caliphate throughout Africa, and elsewhere.

Writing in The River War, his account of the British retaking of Sudan, published in 1899, Churchill noted the threat to Western Civilization radical Islam poses: