"I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam."
Thus warned Hilaire Belloc in 1936 -- long before the Christian West permitted millions of Moslems to immigrate and proliferate, building thousands of new mosques in the United States and Europe, including a huge one in Rome itself a few years ago. Belloc's essay on Moslems, together with five important and meaty Catholic Encyclopedia articles by scholar Gabriel Oussani in 1908, comprise this valuable new book from Roger A. McCaffrey Publishing. Major themes:
What Mohammed actually taught. Why it's heresy
What's in the Koran? A healthy sampling
How close the Moslems came -- as recently as three centuries ago -- to dominating Europe by force
Mohammed's personal background, lineage, wives, offspring, disciples
Islam and women
Why the Moslem military threat was so real...and then collapsed
Why it's a mistake to think Moslems can't adapt to, and use, technology
The real origins and astonishingly rapid development of Islam
Why it remains a potent religious force to this day
Where Catholics and Moslems can agree doctrinally
Islam's corrosive effect on culture and its own people
Paradoxically, why it enjoyed a period of high culture and intellectual achievement
All about the Crusades (and why do Church leaders apologize for them?)
Christianity in Arabia: once dominant, then dominated by Mohammedans (not a pleasant fate, then or now)
Belloc and Oussani's writings make it abundantly clear that Moslems and Christians don't mix very well. The lesson: Christians need to reproduce to survive. Just as important: Christians cannot share political power with sworn enemies without dire consequences for their children and grandchildren.
"Religion is at the root of all political movements and changes, and since we have here a very great religion physically paralyzed but morally intensely alive, we are in the presence of an unstable equilibrium....The suggestion that Islam may re-arise sounds fantastic -- but this is only because men are always powerfully affected by the immediate past: one might say they are blinded by it....The second period of Islamic power may be delayed -- but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed." - Hilaire Belloc