Islamism is Islam

Submitted by Prof. Paul Eidelberg (Israel), Aug 29, 2007 at 15:17

In contrast to Dr. Pipes's view of Islam, let's consider what three no less serious writers have said about Islam prior to the twentieth century, that is, before Islam's resurgence and its current use of suicide bombers .

I will limit this survey to the world-renowned Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), the eminent historian and philologist Ernest Renan (1823-1892), and the greatest scholar-statesman of the 20th century Winston Churchill—of whom I will only quote what he said of Islam in the year 1899!

Alexis de Tocqueville:

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

Ernest Renan:

Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.

Winston Churchill:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.

This passage from Churchill's The River War, published in 1899, should especially chill post-Christian Europe now succumbing to Islam. But what shall we say of Israel and the United States, whose political and intellectual elites lack the courage to identify the enemy, let alone to embark on war-strategy designed to eliminate this most dangerous scourge of civilization?

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