Islam: a historical perspective

Note from Ed.: Walt, selfish curmudgeon that he is, has never before turned over this space to anyone else. However, Agent 12 had his comments on Islam, 9/11 and the killing of Osama bin Laden rejected by a small daily paper near the border. We think these things need to be said. So here's a slightly abbreviated version of a column the lamestream press wouldn't print.

This year will see the tenth anniversary of 9/11. As the day draws closer, chronicles of the war on terror, interviews with survivors and where-were-you-when stories will become a veritable media tsunami. I fear that what will be missing from all this is any thoughtful historical perspective.

To consider the brutal attacks of 9/11 as the isolated evil of a few fanatics is to deny history -- a history that stretches back far beyond the first attempt on the Twin Towers in the 1990s, to the seventh century, to the birth of Islam.

What happened nearly a decade ago was just part of a continuum. We continue to be told that Islam is a "religion of peace" but that's just not so. It spread by force through the Middle East as non-Muslims were given the "choice" of conversion or death. It was the wrongly maligned Crusades that finally brought Islam to heel, but only for a time.

There was a Muslim resurgence in the 16th and 17th centuries, and then another respite for Christendom. In both these cycles, it was Christian fervour and blood that ultimately prevented Islam from taking total control of Europe.

Yet, what has been the reaction since 9/11? We declared war on terror, but instead of acknowledging that what's going on is indeed a religious war, our governments reacted by becoming rampantly secular.

President Barack Obama has declared that the United States is not a Christian country, although at least 75 per cent of Americans identify themselves as such. The percentage is similar in Canada.

Obama heads the pack of Western leaders who believe that by rejecting the Christianity on which our society was established, Islam will be appeased and there will be no bloodshed in the name of Allah. This is based on the naive belief that somehow an Islamic culture and a secular one can coexist peacefully.

For evidence to the contrary, one need only look to the predominantly Islamic countries, where Christians are routinely persecuted and Muslims who convert are imprisoned or killed. Here's a chilling statistic. Since 9/11 there have been 17,193 deadly terror attacks, according to the well-documented website Islam: The Religion of Peace. The site says that in the week ending May 6 there were 37 jihadist attacks resulting in 161 deaths and 302 people critically injured.

The last wave of Islam to wash over Western culture reached its high water mark in the 17th century. Armies from the Ottoman Empire had overrun much of Europe, advancing as far as the gates of Vienna. The victory won by a coalition of Christian armies led by Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland, sent Islam back to retool for its next attempt, which began in the 20th century.

The big difference this time around is that the force of Christianity has been severely weakened. As the brilliant Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc warned in The Great Heresies (1936): Those who direct us and from whom the tone of our policy is taken have no major spiritual interest.... Islam has not suffered this spiritual decline and [in this] lies our peril.

And the date of that battle at Vienna? September 11, 1683. Just a coincidence?

Footnote from Ed.: Click here to read more of what Hilaire Belloc had to say about Islam. Huge thanks to Agent 12, whom we welcome to Walt's blog, for a fine article.