Time for Catholics to Wake Up to the Islamic Threat

Many years ago I lived near an Armenian cemetery and a Maronite church in Cyprus. At that time I knew little about either of these groups although I had heard of the massacres of the Christian Armenians by the Moslem Turks during the First World War. As for the Maronites, all I knew was that they were Catholics from Lebanon who venerated the Virgin Mary and regarded the Pope as their spiritual leader. Like the island´s Christian Greek population they had suffered under Moslem Ottoman rule for centuries.

Cyprus was close to the Holy Land and I went there. In Jerusalem I found myself at the center of three faiths – Jewish, Christian and Moslem. One major difference I learned was that, whereas the Jewish and Christian faiths were home grown and long established, Islam was a foreign dogma imposed by force by Arab invaders more than six centuries after the death of Christ. After taking over Palestine, the victorious Moslems invaded Egypt and north Africa and eventually reached Spain where they stayed for eight centuries before, thankfully, the Christians ousted them. Despite this setback, the Moslem advance into Europe, Asia and Africa has continued relentlessly to this day.

These Mediterranean lands – Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria plus Iraq were run by Moslem rulers for centuries. Millions of Christians continued to live there and were treated like second class citizens. These included the Copts in Egypt and Armenians in many lands. The Armenians finally achieved their own state with the collapse of the atheist Soviet Union in 1991. However, the Christian population in the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh inside Azerbaijan was ethnically cleansed at the barrel of a gun in 2023 in another bloody Moslem advance. Georgia in the Caucasus mountains was another Christian outpost.

Those of us who live in societies where we can practice our faith should appreciate the sacrifices made by our besieged Christian brothers and sisters. They are the barrier that holds back the spread of violent Islam we have seen in the horrendous terrorists attacks that have killed thousands of Christians and Jews in recent years.

Catholics have been among the main targets. On Easter Sunday 2019, Islamic suicide bombers killed 269 people in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka. Islamic fanatics recently shot and hacked around 40 Catholics to death as they held a night vigil in eastern Congo. In Burkina Faso, Moslem extremists killed over 150 people, including many Catholics, in attacks in the town of Manni last October. Islamic State supporters cut the throat of an 84-year-old priest as he said mass in France in July 2016. A 75-year-old Dutch Jesuit priest was shot dead in the Syrian city of Homs in April 2014.

A teacher in France was beheaded at school in 2020 after showing drawings of the Prophet Mohammed during a discussion on freedom of expression. Five years earlier Islamic fanatics murdered 12 people at the offices of the French satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris. Over 190 people were killed in bombings in Madrid in 2004 and 14 in Barcelona in 2017. Almost 1,000 have been killed in various attacks in the UK between 2005 and 2020.

Yet this is a faith that calls itself a religion of peace. I know of no other religion whose followers deliberately murder to spread their beliefs. (They even kill each other in the religious civil war between Sunni and Shiite Moslems.) This violence is condoned by the Islamic hierarchy either publicly or by its silence. Mullahs bless suicide bombers as they head towards their “martyrdoms” and prepare to rape the 72 virgins awaiting to satisfy their lust when they arrive in Paradise. Islam has no Pope or supreme leader. No Islamic religious leader ever steps up and publicly condemns violence by Moslems whereas the Pope always repudiates violence from whatever quarter and calls for peace.

Look what happened to the author Salmon Rushdie whose novel “The Satanic Verses” was said to portray the Prophet Mohammed in a blasphemous way. The Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who had not even read the book, issued a death sentence on Rushdie who spent the following two decades under police protection. A Japanese translator of the book was stabbed to death in 1991, others were attacked and seriously injured and a Norwegian publisher was shot. Rushdie himself lost an eye after being stabbed multiple times. All these acts were committed by Moslems yet not once have I heard any senior Moslem cleric criticize them.

This campaign of forcing their religion on others been accompanied by a stealthier method i.e. immigration to western Europe and claims for political asylum by “refugees”. The Moslem population of Europe is soaring as western democracies turn a blind eye to this crisis. The demographic changes are astonishing. In my lifetimes I have seen areas in Europe change in a way that was unimaginable in the past. Visit parts of London or Marseilles and you could be in Pakistan or north Africa. Unlike Moslem countries which suppress or make life difficult for other religions western democracies allow Islam to flourish and grant citizenship to these incomers. This is despite the fact that they flaunt western norms particularly in their treatment of women which goes against the principle of sexual equality. It is only a matter of time before Moslem political parties are formed in the UK and France with the aim of imposing sharia law.

Political correctness and woke culture mean that public criticism is rarely aired. Those advocating a crackdown on Moslem immigration and their mullahs are branded racists and fascists. Apologists for Islam have invented something called “Islamophobia” which means you cannot say anything against them and what they stand for.

If this demographic trend continues, in a few generations Europeans could be joining their fellow Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other countries as a persecuted minority. Please God this never happens. In the meantime we should help our fellow Catholics in the Middle East by making generous contributions to their congregations. We should also continue to proclaim our faith openly in our own countries through traditional processions and ceremonies at Easter, Christmas and on saints´ days. Mass events like the recent Jubilee of Young People festival in the Vatican that attracted over one million participants from 150 countries should be held and publicized energetically. A huge effort by the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations should be made to turn back the creeping secularization and disdain for Christianity that has led to this situation. Apathy and indifference are our worst enemies in the face of this very real threat to our religion.