You may have seen banner ads for a series of "narrative nonfiction" books called Never Subdued. I saw one of their ads and clicked through and saw the mother of all bad history (Pinoy, Middle Eastern, and Spanish). The current installment discusses the Barbary Pirates of 1700s-1800s North Africa. I am transcribing the ads verbatim with R5s below.

In Never Subdued II, Franklin Hook's narrative nonfiction studies the spread of radical Islam throughout the Mediterranean, Middle East, Southwest Asia and the rest of the world.

Calling /r/badgeography. Although none of these terms are unambiguously defined, they all overlap. What is commonly defined as the "Middle East" is Southwest Asia plus Egypt and arguably the Arab countries of North Africa, which includes all of the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

My curiosity was first piqued when I was doing research for my first historical narrative, Never Subdued, which involved Muslims of the southern Philippines, some of whom were pirates. I discovered that these characters were labeled Moros by the Spanish invaders because they were Muslims.

First, the conflict that involved "Muslims of the southern Philippines, some of whom were pirates" was the Philippine-American War. Catholic and Muslim Filipinos alike fought against American troops, although the Muslims were somewhat better organized and took longer to put down.

Of course, I learned quite a bit about the Moros during my original research, but many questions remained. Why, for example, did some of these practitioners of the Muslim religion turn to piracy?

Why did some Christians and even some Jews turn to piracy? Piracy largely has more to do with being a seafaring culture than it does with being a Muslim one.

Why was there such hostility to the Spanish and, currently, also to the Jews?

Easy to explain: the Spanish kicked them out of their homes, along with the Sephardic Jews. The real hostility was felt by Catholic fanatics in Spain towards Muslims, not vice versa.

Why where they such fanatics in following certain passages in the Koran, (also spelled Qur'an') especially those suggesting that murder and violence is an acceptable part of the culture?

Barbary piracy and slavery were not all that different from European piracy and slavery; a number of the leading Barbary pirates were European pirates who converted to Islam for economic or other reasons. Also, the Wiki for Barbary pirates shows exactly zero mentions of the Quran/Qur'an/Koran. The Qur'an does not explicitly endorse wanton violence and murder; the cases where violence is endorsed are a matter for debate at best (although this is more /r/bad_religion).

I don't claim to be any expert of the Koran or the Muslim religion, but perhaps there are some significant parallels with the Christian Bible and the Torah (the Torah and the first five books of the old testament of the Christian Bible are the same) of the Hebrews that would explain fundamentalist thinking.

Wut? Is this dog-whistle anti-Semitism?

This narrative nonfiction presents the consequences of religious intolerance from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim fundamentalists, and Hook masterfully relates this story to Isis and present day extremist states. Presenting a solid review of historical acts of terror from fanatics belonging to three of the major religions, Franklin Hook presents the reader with suggestions on how we can handle current situation with Isis and gives hope for the future.

Skipping this paragraph (R2) aside from a brief mention that the current military and geopolitical context is very different from early 19th century Europe and North Africa.

BONUS ROUND BAD PINOY HISTORY:

Let's see how he handles the Philippine-American wars, which pitted both Muslim and Catholic Filipinos against the US Army (IANAF: I am not a Filipino so correct any errors)

A peace proclamation in 1902 officially ended the insurgency, but the U.S. still faced the problem of controlling the southern islands, which were predominantly Muslim. Combat with Moro fundamentalists featured brutalities similar to those seen in today’s asymmetrical conflicts—hit-and-run attacks, personal jihad and heavy collateral damage on the civilian population.

As far as I know, religious fundamentalism was no more a motive of the Moros than it was of the Catholics of the northern islands, yet the author doesn't call them Catholic fundamentalists.

http://www.neversubdued.com/ns1-reviews.php