from the site:
the Catholic Thing
9/11, Belloc, and Islam
(http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/911-belloc-and-islam/print.html)
(http://www.thecatholicthing.org/component/option,com_mailto/link,aHR0cDovL3d3dy50aGVjYXRob2xpY3RoaW5nLm9yZy9jb2x1bW5
zLzIwMTQvOTExLWJlbGxvYy1hbmQtaXNsYW0uaHRtbA==/tmpl,component/) By Fr.
C. John McCloskey Thursday, 11 September 2014
As another sad anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United
States arrives, it’s clear that we are nowhere near the end of this conflict
between the radicalized Muslim world and the Christian (and post-Christian)
population. There seems no reason why the jihad of a relentlessly
committed sector of Muslims may not continue for decades more.
While Catholics in America are also engaged in legal, political, and
social battles to defend our religious liberties, those of us keeping track of
the news in non-mainstream religious ghettos are increasingly horrified by
the state of religious liberty elsewhere, and particularly in the Middle
East.
The place where our Savior was born and lived has been under attack, as
have surrounding countries such as Syria and Iraq, where many Christians are
being driven from their ancestral homelands or even undergoing martyrdom.
While we pray for peace in all countries where people of other faiths too
are suffering persecution, naturally, what lies uppermost in our minds and
hearts is the tragedy and exile of Christians with ancient roots in this
biblical part of the world.
The modern-day revival of religious conflict between Muslims and
Christians is not the main topic of this column, however. The Church, both
Greek and
Roman, has been in conflict with Islam (the supposed religion of peace) on
and off for over a thousand years now.
Within the first century or so following Mohammed’s death, Islamic forces
swept across the Near East and Northern Africa, jumped the strait of
Gibraltar to conquer almost all of Spain, and were threatening France. The
medieval _Song of Roland_ (http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/391/pg391.html)
is a poetic account of the key defense of the Frankish army against Muslim
forces in this area, while in Spain _tales of El Cid_
(http://www.classicspanishbooks.com/cantar-del-mio-cid.html) celebrate the
early part of Spain’
s Reconquista, a centuries-long pushback by Christian Spain that barely
concluded as Columbus’s began his voyage to the New World.
After 9/11, no one should be surprised to learn that Islam is turning the
West’s superiority back on itself. What is surprising is that a lone
historian saw this coming in the 1930s. The great Catholic writer Hilaire
Belloc,
friend of G.K. Chesterton and a prolific historian, was prescient as no
other writer about the resurgence of Islam in our own era.
(http://astore.amazon.com/thecatthi-20/detail/B004QGYAXM) Here are just
of the more salient passages from his work on the threat of Islam to the
West:
* “We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near
future. Perhaps if we lose our Faith it will rise.”
* * “The future always comes as surprise. . . .but I for my
part cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the
return of Islam.”
* * “And in the contrast between our religious chaos and the
religious certitude still strong throughout the Mohammedan world. . .lies
our peril.”
* * “There is nothing inherent to Mohammedanism to make it
incapable of modern science and modern war.”
* * “[Islam] still converts pagan savages wholesale. . . .No
fragment of Islam ever abandons its sacred book, its code of morality, its
organized system of prayer, its code of morals, its simple doctrine. In
view of this, anyone with a knowledge of history is bound to ask himself
whether we shall not see in the future a rival of Mohammedan political power,
and the renewal of the old pressure of Islam on Christendom.”
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