The civil and religious authorities of the formerly Christian world are deluding themselves about the nature of Islam. According to them, there is a good Islam—open, passive, tolerant - and a bad Islam - fundamentalist, intolerant, violent—that is really a falsification of the true Islam. What evidence do they rely on, though, for claiming this, and for projecting this image on public opinion?

The constant interpretation of the Koran and of Islamic law and the examples from the life of Mohammed all come, unfortunately, from the fundamentalist Islam. The will to forge an image of a liberal Islam is the fruit of an idealist philosophy that simply leaves reality out of account. But reality always gets even.

The Role of Passive Islam

Islam with a happy face, peaceful and open, is carving the way for fundamentalist Islam. There are realist Muslims who, intelligently, take advantage of the favorable moment in order to implant Islam into the dechristianized nations. Their "open" attitude helps fortify Islam. Their realism keeps them from openly demanding that Islam reign as absolute master. The moderates know that their mode of acting is very advantageous for Islam. Nevertheless, they do not forget that Islam is by nature theocratic, that it governs the whole life of the City. They know that there is no distinction, and still less separation, between the Islamic religion and the State. To claim the contrary would be to denature Islam; it would be to imagine an Islam that does not really exist.

Fundamentalist Muslims

The Muslims, who take their religion seriously and want to practice it as it should be, are called "integralists," fanatics. This accusation is unjust because the way they see it, and often the way they act, corresponds to Islamic doctrine. The Koran and Islamic law are on their side. To disagree with such a doctrine is quite legitimate, but to wish to fabricate an imaginary Islam is both illegitimate and dangerous. To imagine an Islam after the manner of Christianity, where a distinction is maintained between the political and the religious domains, is a supplementary illusion, because the Koran itself, the Islamic tradition, and the deeds and words of Mohammed all contradict it. The Koran, for true Muslims, is the norm, the rule because it is the "divine" word. The Koran, then, being the word of Allah, must, by the laws it contains, govern all of social and religious life.

The moderate Muslims do not deny this; some liberals deny it in thought; but both, in the long run, are preparing the ground for the Muslims of the Koran who, when they shall be strong and the circumstances favorable, will demand by every means the application of the real Islam....Then our civil and religious idealists will be surprised that the reality does not correspond to the Islam of their imagination. Then, perhaps, they shall regret not having Christianized the Muslims, who, in their immense majority, are the descendants of Christians who were made Muslims by force, by threats and by discriminatory laws that humiliated them, broke their resistance, and sometimes reduced them to a state of misery. Does it need to be said that the entire Near East and northern Africa were Christian? Wasn't it the principles inscribed in the Koran, the deeds and the words of Mohammed and Islamic law, imposed by terror on so many Christian nations, that made them Muslim? Fundamentalist Islam is the real Islam, that puts into practice the doctrine Islam. The problem isn't fundamentalist Islam, it is Islam period. Islamic fundamentalism takes its principles from the Koran and from Islamic tradition. The actions of the fundamentalists frighten the ignorant who refuse to see that Islam by nature is conquering and warlike. The greatest service that our civil and religious authorities can render to the Muslims themselves and to Christians is to evangelize the Muslims, communicate to them the knowledge of God and belief in the Trinity who is charity. Any other attitude is delusion.

The Koran and War

The real Muslims who want a holy war follow the Koran. In fact, the jihad is an essential prescription of Islam. The Koran, without which there would be no Islam, urges it: "The true believers say: Has not God ordered a chapter that commands the holy war" (Sura 47:22); or elsewhere: "Kill the idolaters wherever you find them, imprison them, besiege them, ambush them" (Sura 9:5); and, "Make war on unbelievers" (Sura 9:29). "When you come upon unbelievers, massacre them, tighten the bands of the captives that you will have taken. Then you will set them free, or you will release them for a ransom" (Sura 8:57).

According to the Koran, a non-Muslim is less than nothing: "To Allah, there are no animals viler than those who do not believe and remain unbelievers" (Sura 8:57). That is why it is necessary to Islamize them by force and by humiliation. And those who resist Islam and its founder must be chastised, according to the Koran: "Here is the fate of those who fight Allah and his messenger: you will put them to death or you will make them suffer the torture of the cross; you will cut their hands and their feet alternately. They will be driven from the country" (Sura 5:37). And, since the Muslims are realists, they take into account circumstances and make, accordingly, temporary peace or war: "Do not display cowardice, and do not call the infidels to peace when you are superior to them" (Sura 47:22).

In a word, as the Koran is the word of Allah for all Muslims, it holds for all times and all peoples until the end of the world. It must be applied according to the indications that Allah himself gives to his believers. This logically explains what is today happening in the Sudan, in Algeria, and in numerous Islamic countries. To idealize Islam is the greatest wrong that one can do to the Muslims themselves.

The secular media have banned an honest presentation of the history of Islam against the West, but every Christian needs to known the truth of the matter, so here it is. On at least three occasions, the Mohammedans tried to subjugate the West and Christianity. In each case, the Catholic Church was instrumental in preventing the disaster.

1. In 711, the Arab government of North Africa was under the authority of Mousa ben Nassair, who depended upon Caliph Walid of Damascus. Mousa sent Tarik ben Ziyad, his general, to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and invade Spain. Many thousands of Berbers and Arabs crossed the waters in boats furnished by the unprincipled Count Julian, who was conspiring with the Arabs. King Rodrigo divided his army into three flanks: he commanded the principal part, Archbishop Oppas of Seville commanded another, and Prince Sisebert commanded the third. The battle took place on the banks of Guadalete River. Rodrigo fought to the death, but did not manage to avoid defeat by the Saracens. With the Catholic army destroyed, Tarik took city after city: Ecija, Cordova, Toledo, Medina-Sidonia, Carmona, Seville, Merida, etc. In less than two years, almost all of Sapin was taken by the Arabs. Only 700 years later, in 1492, would the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella expel the Moors from Granada in the Reconquista [reconquest].

2. This aggressive campaign of Ali Pasha, leader of the Mohammedan Turks, to overrun Christian civilization resulted, on October 7, 1571, in his death and that of 25,000 of his sailors in the Gulf of Lepanto, or Gulf of Corinth, in southern Greece, at the hands of Admiral Don Juan, commissioned by Pope St. Pius V. It should be mentioned that 12,000 of Ali Pasha's forces were Christians who had been enslaved to man the galleys.

3. A little over a century after the Battle of Lepanto, another momentous battle occurred between Catholic and Mohammedan Turkish forces. Again, the stakes were high -- in this case, the city of Vienna and a temptation to the Turkish forces to press deeper and deeper into Europe. In July 1683 the Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha led his Turkish troops to Vienna and laid siege against the city. On September 11, 1683, a decisive battle was fought before the city walls. After an initial setback, Poland's great military leader, and later king, John Sobieski with his forces stormed the enemy camp and routed its army. He sent to Pope Innocent XI a letter that proclaimed Veni, vidi, Deus vicit [I came, I saw, God conquered], a play on Veni, vidi, vici [I came, I saw, I conquered], Julius Caesar's classic summary of his swift victory at the Battle of Zela in 47 B.C. over King Pharnaces in the Pontic campaign.

Note that the disasters of September 11, 2001, occurred on the same day that John Sobieski defeated the Mohammedans in 1683 in Vienna. Coincidence?