Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc foresaw Islamic jihad in 1938

On New Year's Eve, while Muslim "refugees" were assaulting and robbing women in Cologne and other European cities (see "Trump warns Germans after asylum-seekers' sex and crime spree"), Breitbart published an article by Thomas Williams, Ph.D., headed "Hilaire Belloc in 1938: Islam ‘the Most Formidable and Persistent Enemy’ of Western Civilization". It's timely reading precisely because of the events of that night.

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870-1953) was known as an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, man of letters, soldier, political activist, historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early 20th century. He was President of the Oxford Union, and later a Member of the British Parliament from 1906 to 1910.

Dr. Belloc wrote on a vast range of subjects, from warfare to poetry to history to current affairs. He ranks among the "Big Four" of Edwardian Letters, along with the free-thinker H. G. Wells, the atheist George Bernard Shaw, and the traditional Catholic G. K. Chesterton. His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works, and his vision into the heart of Catholic history is incisive and succinct. The year just past has proven him a great prophet, unheeded in his day and desperately needed now, as his vision of the future is played out in Europe and America.

That vision is contained in Dr. Belloc's 1938 book The Great Heresies, in which he saw almost a century ahead into the current day. He was convinced that Europe and America had forgotten about Islam to their own peril, and were unaware that the Muslim religion could rise again and pose perhaps the greatest threat of any enemy of the Western World. "It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable," he wrote in 1938, "that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent."

In the chapter titled "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed", he predicted the re-emergence of Islam as a global force and unparalleled foe of Christian civilization. "Less than a hundred years before the American War of Independence," he wrote, "a Mohammedan army was threatening to overrun and destroy Christian civilization." Thus there was no reason to think that Islam would not return to its former power, to become once again "the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had... as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past."

Dr. Belloc saw in his own time what is even more true nearly a century later, that European Christianity had sold out to "temporal things". He wrote, "There is no reason whatever why [Islam] should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it -- whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it."

And that's exactly what has happened. We have turned our backs on the Christian Faith that made the Western world strong. Meanwhile, the Muslims grow ever stronger, ever more fanatic, in their false and heretical religion. And, following the commands of Mohammed and the Holy Qu'ran, they are waging jihad -- holy war -- in our own lands.

They do not send whole armies against us, as they did centuries ago. Instead, they infiltrate our countries disguised as refugees and asylum-seekers, to wreak havoc, take over our cities and destroy us and our way of life. And what do we do? Welcome them with open arms! Surely it's time we heeded the warnings given to us by Hilaire Belloc, Enoch Powell, Charles de Gaulle and others who God blessed with the ability to look into the future.

Click here to read the meta-book version of The Great Heresies, courtesy of EWTN and Carnegie Mellon University. If you want to skip the Arians, Albigensians and Lutherans, click here to go straight to "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed".