by Patrick J. Buchanan
In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a perceptive British Catholic
looked beyond the continent over which war clouds hung and saw another cloud
forming.
"It has always seemed to me ... probable," wrote Hilaire Belloc, "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."
Belloc was prophetic. Even as Christianity seems to be dying in Europe,
Islam is rising to shake the 21st century as it did so many previous
centuries.
Indeed, as one watches U.S. Armed Forces struggle against Sunni insurgents,
Shia militias and jihadists in Iraq, and a resurgent Taliban, all invoking
Allah, Victor Hugo's words return to mind: No army is so powerful as an idea
whose time has come.
The idea for which many of our adversaries fight is a compelling one. They
believe there is but one God, Allah, that Muhammad is his prophet, that
Islam, or submission to the Quran, is the only path to paradise and that a godly
society should be governed according to the Shariah, the law of Islam. Having tried other
ways and failed, they are coming home to Islam.
What idea do we have to offer? . . .
FULL TEXT
Michael Neumann, "Has Islam Failed?,"
The Wisdom Fund, May 15, 2003
[In a world far too often dominated by politicians imbued with religious
fundamentalism of all flavors - Jewish, Christian, Muslim - we need the
thoughtfulness, self-awareness and subtlety that comes from progressive
religious expression.--Stephen Julius Stein, "Islam's Ann Coulter," Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2006]
[Gazing across what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the "arc of crisis,"
U.S. foreign policy appears to be disintegrating.--Patrick J. Buchanan, "Time for an
'Agonizing Reappraisal'," American Conservative, July 3, 2006 Issue]
[Dean takes a sincere, well-considered look at how conservative politics in
the U.S. is veering dangerously close to authoritarianism, offering a
penetrating and highly disturbing portrait of many of the major players in
Republican politics and power.--John Dean, "Conservatives Without Conscience," Viking Adult, July 11,
2006]
Cover Story: Mike Allen and Romesh Ratnesar, "The
end of cowboy diplomacy," Time, July 17, 2006
[A cross-cultural group of 20 prominent world figures has called for urgent
efforts to heal the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies.
They say the chief causes of the rift are not religion or history, but
recent political developments, notably the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.--"Call
to bridge West-Muslim divide," BBC News, November 13, 2006