A FOREWORD FOR PAX ARABICA by Nachum Kaplan
When Daniel Clarke-Serret invited me to write a foreword to Pax Arabica, I asked myself: why does a book like this matter? What compels me, as a journalist and political commentator, to lend my voice?
The answer is simple. The book represents writing and thinking of the highest calibre. Daniel offers a sweeping and meticulously argued indictment of Arabized Islam as an imperial force. Colonialism has, for too long, been regarded as a uniquely Western sin and something in which only nations engage. Daniel shows that Arabized Islam itself, whether secularized or more overtly religious, is history’s greatest colonial and expansionist force.
There are books that arrive to flatter the reader’s conscience, and then there are those that confront it. Pax Arabica belongs emphatically to the latter. Daniel’s narrative is confrontational, yes—but it is also deeply honest. This book makes a persuasive argument that the Middle East’s conflicts are not about borders so much as they are about the moral map that the modern world uses to navigate—and lose—itself.
Daniel writes not as an academic detached from the dust of history, but as a moral archaeologist unearthing what polite diplomacy prefers to bury. Pax Arabica offers a disciplined, unflinching excavation of the ideological and structural forces that underpin Arab imperialism.
Pax Arabica does not merely chronicle events — it exposes the civilisational grammar beneath them. It traces how the vocabulary of “anti-colonialism” was weaponized to erase older colonialisms; how the rhetoric of “peace” became a euphemism for managed hostility; and how the Arab world’s wars against Israel have been sustained not by grievance alone, but by an ideological infrastructure that sanctifies grievance itself with lies such as “genocide” and “apartheid.”
This work is also a testament to intellectual courage: a refusal to let Western self-deception about the Middle East ossify into dogma. It asks uncomfortable questions such as: What has been done to indigenous minorities in the Middle East? What kind of peace is built atop silence and displacement? And what price does the West pay for choosing rhetorical softness over honest confrontation?
Particularly valuable is the way the book treats Middle Eastern conflict as far more than the Israel–Palestinian struggle that dominates Western discourse on the region. From Kurds, Yazidis, Jews, Black Africans and more, Arab-Islamic expansion and the insidious slave trade that helped build it are laid bare. He even places non-state actors such as ISIS within the wider imperialist picture.
I encourage you to engage with Pax Arabica not as a passive reader, but as a participant in the quest for clarity. Let it stir your mind, unsettle your assumptions, and sharpen your moral sense. Then ask: What am I doing with what I now see? Where do I stand? What will I refuse?
Any reader who does so will emerge with fewer illusions and a renewed commitment to real peace—not the kind built on myth and erasure, but one built on truth, accountability and human dignity.
— Nachum Kaplan, Moral Clarity, November 2025
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PAX ARABICA
PART 1: BABEL
Introduction: The time to change the narrative is now! // Chapter 1: On Arab Imperialism // Chapter 2: On the Vanguard //Chapter 3: On Dictatorial Oppression // Chapter 4: On Islamist “Freedom” // Chapter 5: On Islamist Misery // Chapter 6: On Arab Apartheid // Chapter 7: On Middle Eastern Minorities // Chapter 8: On the Masters of Ethnic Cleansing // Chapter 9: On Genocide, Slavery and Racist Indifference //Chapter 10: On Unjust “Justice” and the Inversion of Language // Chapter 11: On Appeasement // Chapter 12: On the Man who stood against Pax Arabica
PART 2: EDEN
Chapter 13: On Nations, States and the Nation State // Chapter 14: On Sykes-Picot // Chapter 15: On Zionism and the duty to protect // Chapter 16: On the New Regional Sheriff // Chapter 17: On the Psychology of Strength // Chapter 18: On the Paradigm Shift // Chapter 19: On the Post-Imperial Two State Solution // Chapter 20: On the End of the Great Game
Very true, from all I have read it is overwhelmingly impressive. There have been books before which had documented colonialism, conquest, assimilation, appropriation as an unfortunately recurring phenomenon in history - in which "The West" played a comparably minor role - , or publications specifically depicting Arab/Muslim colonialism and rightly describing it as the most devastating and (to this day) longest-lasting instance of colonialism and enslavement (especially Tidiane N'Diaye/ "The Veiled Genocide (!)"), and the justified fear of it is erroneously and inaccurately labeled "Islamophobia," as if it was a kind of "racism" and unfounded fear.
One can only hope that this book will help to at least soften these one-sided and unfounded views, and that it will be translated into as many languages as possible.
I'll read the book, judging from Nachum Kaplan's introduction, it is super actual and badly needed.
I would also like to recommend this book, not much known, yet excellent:
"Hitler: The Proclaimed Messiah of the Palestinian Cause" by Aabhas Maldahiyar.