Count Dracula Stopped by Muslims!

[0:02]I'm going to tell you the story about how Dracula was stopped by Muslims. Now, I'd never heard this story before and I've fact-checked it and it's all historically accurate. So where's this story come from? Well, there's a fascinating new book published called Hidden History, 30 Untold Stories of Islam in the West. By a very celebrated and famous Dutch writer, activist, Muslim, by the name of course of Joram Van Klaveren. Now, he was once one of the most outspoken critics of Islam in the Netherlands. And as a former MP for the far-right party called Party for Freedom, he submitted motions to the Dutch Parliament to close mosques and ban the Quran and remove Islam from Dutch society. Um, this is his second book. Uh his first book was titled Apostate, which I really recommend. And in that, he describes his personal spiritual journey, a remarkable story, to be honest, that led him ultimately to embrace Islam. And since then, he has worked to challenge misconceptions about the faith and build bridges through dialogue and education. His work is never been more important and necessary really for the West with the rise of particularly nasty form of Christian nationalism across in the West, actually, as we know. So in this book about the 30 untold stories of Islam and the West, is basically um, 30 uh stories which tell us, basically, untold stories that have been forgotten or most most of us never knew. And um that are very, very interesting and almost at random I picked the one uh entitled Dracula stopped by Muslims, because it's such an interesting story. And I said, I fact-checked this, because I'd heard half these these uh points and they are historically accurate. So, you know, credit where credit's due, but before we do that, I was going to show you a few seconds from a Hollywood uh film. This is how Hollywood uh recently has portrayed uh Dracula. And um you know, it's really not historical, as you will see. So you had you had this fantastic scene where you have, you know, a storm brewing, it's dark and oh my God, what's what's happening? And of course we all know what's going to be happening next. A whole cosmos is is transfixed with this lightning and storm and who should appear out, who should appear out of the darkness? You guessed it. Dracula. Here he is walking on his own towards the army. So the prince. So we're not going to uh as much as uh this is very enticing, we're not going to be uh watching that movie. Um, but the point of that is just to show, you know, how uh fantastic and supernatural and kind of way over the top and pure fantasy, pure legend, um as has been crusted around the historical Dracula. And this historical Dracula that our brilliant author is going to tell us a bit now. So I'm just going to read this short uh essay, very interesting. He says in 1430, in the year 1430, in the principality of Valachia, a former country in what is now Southern Romania, a boy named Vlad III was born, the son of King Vlad II. Later in life, he would become known as Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, or Dracula, the Dragon. Now, that's what Dracula means actually, I didn't realize, it means the Dragon. That's explained in a minute. Now, when Vlad was just 12 years old, he and his brother Radu, he had a brother, were placed under the custody of the Ottomans and raised at the court of the Sultan. This was part of an agreement their father made with the Ottomans to secure military support in order to maintain their his rule. Their stay at the court served as a guarantee that King Vlad II would honor the agreement to pay taxes on time, and as a means of securing his loyalty. Now, Radu, the younger brother, so Dracula had a younger brother, adapted well to his new environment, even becoming friends with the Sultan's son, Mehmet II. Who would later, of course, become famous as Sultan himself, and eventually converted to Islam. So Dracula's brother converted to Islam, was a Christian and became a Muslim, interesting, I didn't know that. Vlad took a different path, no kidding. After the death of his father and his own rise to the throne in Malaysia, he chose the side of the Christian Hungarians against the Islamic Ottomans. He also became a member of the so-called Order of the Dragon, a Christian military order tasked with defending the church and fighting the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire. This membership earned him the well-known nickname Dracula, which means Dragon. So he joined became a member of the Order of the Dragon. So he was known as by his nickname Dragon or Dracula. Years later in 1459, Mehmet II, now Sultan and formerly Vlad's childhood friend, his companion, sent diplomats to Dracula to urge him to pay the annual tribute. And this is where it gets very dark. When the Ottoman diplomats arrived, Dracula informed them that he had no intention of paying. He also demanded that the diplomats remove their turbans out of respect. Can you guess what happens next? When they refused, because they did, Dracula ordered his soldiers to nail the turbans to the diplomat's skulls so that they would never have to remove them again. They died a gruesome death. Many horror stories like this are told about Vlad Dracula. For example, he is said to have once dined in a field full of soldiers he had just killed. He supposedly dipped his bread in their blood before eating it. He even boasted about his cruelty. There's actually a letter from Dracula. In a letter from 1462, while at war with the Ottoman Empire, Vlad wrote the following, quote, I have killed peasants, men and women, young and old, even among our rebellious people. We killed 23,884 Turks, not counting those we burned in their homes or whose heads we cut off by our soldiers. End quote. He's boasting about it. His nickname, the Impaler, also stemmed from his cruelty. Impalement, in which people were pierced with a spear or placed on a sharpened stake, was his favorite method of execution. It also served as psychological warfare against his enemy. And I imagine that was very powerful, of course. Imagine the reputation he gave he got about that whole region. His reputation for brutality and sadism helped him stay in power. People were deeply afraid of him, yeah, no kidding. After many battles and wars, the troops of Sultan Mehmet II, which included Vlad's Muslim brother Radu, finally reached Vlad Dracula in the year 1476. He was punished for all his horrific crimes and ultimately beheaded, which is quite a merciful end, considering what he did. Thus, it was thanks to the Muslims that the tyranny of one of Europe's cruelest rulers was finally brought to an end. Wow, that's an extraordinary final sentence. Now, I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that it was the Muslims that ultimately captured him and punished him for his crimes and executed him. I didn't know that. I mean, when was the last time you saw a Hollywood movie that says thanks to the Muslims, the tyranny of one of Europe's cruelest rulers was finally brought to an end? I never heard that. So that's one of the great things about this uh book, Hidden History. Yeah, sure it is. 30 Untold Stories of Islam in the West. Uh and I'll link to uh this book in the description uh below. It's interesting on the back cover it says, Islam and the West are often seen as opposites. But is that really true? Hidden History, in other words, this book uncovers a fascinating and largely forgotten chapter of our past through 30 remarkable stories. It reveals how deeply rooted Islam has been in the Western world, long before countries like the Netherlands or the United States even existed. With sharp insights and compelling anecdotes, Hidden History brings to life the intertwined legacy of Islam and the West. It invites readers into a broader, more honest conversation about history, identity and shared heritage. This book offers an inspiring read for anyone interested in exploring our common past with fresh eyes. So uh, extraordinary book and uh, inshallah I will be reading uh other extracts from other uh chapters. Do get the book. There's some fascinating, the contents page is really, really interesting, like, no Croissant without Islam. I know what he's, I know what he's going to say about this, but the French will be horrified to realize they wouldn't have their lovely Croissants without Islam. How so? How is that the case? And again, this is uh I knew this anyway. This is uh history. Um, gosh, I mean there are so many interesting, British convert founded England's first Mosque. Um, anyway, I'm not going to spoil the fun. Uh, do get the book and we will look at other chapters soon, inshallah.