Well, they did something similar when they got to Damascus. There in Roman times the Romans had built a temple to Jupiter, which after the rise of Christianity and the collapse of ancient Rome was turned into a Byzantine church famous for its claim to be in possession of the head of John the Baptist.

And when the Muslims swarmed into Damascus, they took that church over and what they did tells a story. When they first overran the city – with very few people, by the way – they came upon this large, Christian Byzantine community, and so what they did was to enter the church and force the Christians to share it. The Christians were confined to the eastern end of the structure, and the Muslim set up a mithrab – that’s this niche in the wall indicating the direction of Mecca (an idea, praying to a city, they stole from the Jews). And this shared arrangement lasted for the next 70 years, two generations.

Eventually, though, the Christian community in Damascus was pushed out of the center of town away from the old Byzantine church and the Muslims took it over completely and destroyed that which was holy to the Christians and built on the spot today’s tourist attraction, the Great Ummayad Mosque. The author here notes that today maybe ten per cent of Syria is Christian.

This is the pattern. In each generation Muslims do what they can and have patience until they reach their goal of stealing other people’s wealth and all in the name of Islam.

Islam is the religion of a predatory, larcenous people, the Arabs, who were always marauders…