Knight of Rook

Let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that the Muslims entered Spain in 711. Let’s pretend a man named Charles Martel checked

Charles Martel at the battle of Tours

their conquest at the battle of Tours. Let’s pretend the war over who would control Spain lasted until the 1400’s.  Let’s pretend that the Christian West launched a series of wars against Islam in the nearly 200 year period between 1095- 1291. Let’s pretend that in the year 1453 the Muslims took Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire. Let’s pretend the Muslims continued to advance to the gates of Vienna where they were finally defeated and driven back in 1683. Let’s pretend that this conflict (which had raged off and on for almost a thousand years) quieted down for a while (except for some trouble caused by the Ottomans every now and then). During this period the British established their empire upon which the sun never set, the Americans became a nation, and Napoleon terrorized Europe.

Let’s pretend that in the year 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood was founded. Let’s pretend that Islam experienced a revival in the twentieth century. Let’s pretend that a man named Osama bin Laden embodied this revival, and that on

Osama bin Laden

September 11th, 2001 he launched a major attack against the leading nation of the West. Let’s pretend that the nation that came under attack denies everything above as merely “pretend”, and that the Christian West and the Islamic East are in perfect harmony.

Now let’s look in a history book and in the modern world. We make a startling discovery: everything we just pretended is a fact. It is a fact that ever since the battle of Tours in 732 A.D, Islam and the West have been more or less at war. We are now at a point in history where it is more, not less. Instantly in your mind comes the images and stories and perhaps personal experiences of contact with nice Muslims. These however are individuals, they do not embody the nature of their entire civilization, just as you and I do not embody our entire civilization. History shows we are set to collide, and if we deny this for political correctness or advantage or even with the good intention of promoting peace we will only bring destruction on ourselves. The Byzantines ignored it and they fell. We, the Western world must not ignore it.

Video footage showing Hasan before the shootings

Now let’s turn and look at a man named Nidal Malik Hasan. He was a Major in the U.S. Army. He was a Muslim. He even at one point had a bumper sticker with the words “Allah is love”. Mr. Hasan didn’t want to go to Afghanistan to fight his Muslim brethren, so he dawned Eastern garb, grabbed his gun and killed 13 people and wounding over a score of others. The reaction? Maj. Hasan is under stress, and it wasn’t his fault that he shot all of those people. And for goodness’ sake don’t anybody say it had anything to do with religion!

It had everything to do with his religion. It was rooted in over a thousand years of conflict between West and East. The 13 people that died at Fort Hood were only the latest casualties in that struggle. Maj. Hasan conducted an act of treachery and arguably war. He killed 13 people. I don’t know if he was under stress, and it doesn’t matter. 13 people are dead. Yet because of moral cowardice, political correctness and foolish blindness we must determine his psychological state.

Maj. Hasan is being dismissed as a nut case because he made the statement that the war on terror is a “war on Islam”. The media and political and military leaders are bending over backwards to make it clear that it isn’t true. They’re right. We aren’t waging war on Islam, and I would say that’s a mistake. You can say that West and East can happily live together but that does not make it so. Samuel Huntington in his book “Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” called it right when he made the statement, “The West’s problem is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam itself.”  To say otherwise may sound nice, but it is denying history. The day is coming when we must either face up to the facts, or suffer the fate of everyone else in history who thought they were invincible, and that history would never cathch up to them. It happened to the Persians. It happened to the Greeks. It happened to Carthage. It happened to Rome. It happened to the Byzantines. It happened to Napoleon. It happened to the Ottomans. It happened to the Germans. Now it is threatening not just one people or country, but an entire civilization.

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat. – Rudyard Kipling