Catholic Historian Belloc Foresaw in 1938 the Mohammedan Jihad
And Predicted that Islam Would Be the Greatest Threat to the Western World
TRADITIO
Catholic Historian Hilaire Belloc in His Great Heresies
Predicted in 1938 that the Mohammedan Religion Would Be
"The Most Formidable and Persistent" Enemy of Western Civilization
The Year 2015 Has Proven Belloc a Prophet
One Who Was Unheeded in His Own Day
And Desperately Needed in Our Own
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), who served in the British Parliament from 1906 to 1910, is by far and away the most readable, most insightful, and most prescient modern Catholic historian. His vision into the heart of Catholic history is incisive and succinct. In 1938, in his book The Great Heresies, Belloc saw almost a century ahead into the current day when he called Mohammedanism "the most formidable and persistent enemy" of Western Civilization.
Belloc was convinced in his day that Europe and America had forgotten about Islam to their own peril and were unaware that the Mohammedan 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," Belloc 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."
Belloc wrote on a vast range of subjects, from warfare to poetry to history to current affairs. He is known as one of the?Big Four?of Edwardian Letters, along with the free-thinker H. G. Wells, the atheist George Bernard Shaw, and the Catholic G. K. Chesterton. The year 2015 has proven Belloc a prophet, one who was unheeded in his own day and desperately?needed in our own.
In 1938, Belloc devoted an entire chapter to Islam, which he titled "The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed," in which he predicted the reemergence of Islam as a global force and unparalleled foe of Christian civilization. It was Belloc?s contention that Islam is "the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past." Belloc reminded his readers that "less than 100 years before the American War of Independence a Mohammedan army was threatening to overrun and destroy Christian civilization." Thus, he argued, there was no reason that Islam would not return to its former power and once again threaten the peace and well-being of Christian Civilization.
Belloc saw in his own time what is even more true in our time, that European Christianity had sold out to "temporal things." In fact, temporal things are all that Francis-Bergoglio and his Newchurch of the New Order talk about. Said Belloc: "there is no reason whatever why it [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." What Belloc prophesied in his time has come true in ours: the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has established by force a caliphate in the Middle East. [Some information for this Commentary was contributed by Breitbart.]