published in 1899, on the British reconquest of the Sudan, culminating in the 1898 battle of Omdurman where British troops completely annihilated a Dervish-Sudanese army three times its size. Out of 30.000 Islamic-Dervish soldiers over half were killed. The British lost less than 50 men with 400 wounded. Churchill saw action as part of the Lancer calvary and the use by the British of modern arms and technologies on stone age warriors, left a profound impact on the 24 year old man. Technology, discipline and firepower would always overwhelm a vicious and zealous foe.
Even at this young age Churchill, having survived a battle with Islamic fanatics saw plainly Islamic society for what it was, and what it signified. Yet Omdurman was just the beginning of Churchill’s acquaintance with fanatical Islam. Churchill had significant experience with Islam throughout his career responsible at various times before World War II for Iraq, Palestine, Egypt, the construction of the Anglo-Persian oil company, and he was quite familiar through travel with Islamic locales ranging from East Africa to North West Africa to Palestine and Turkey. He possessed in fact much practical first hand knowledge of Islam.
But Churchill’s initial reaction was his most accurate and descriptive. After the Sudanese wars he published his 2-volume book, The River War, and in it he recounts the re-subjugation by small British forces of a massive land area. His depiction of Islam is a timeless classic, as relevant today as it was 106 years ago:
‘How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic