Barack Obama's Islamophobia

Churchill on Islam

Since politicians and neocons like to make themselves seem strong when responding to Muslim terrorism by joining themselves to the ghost of Winston Churchill, it would be appropriate to see what Churchill himself thought about Islam. This is from his 1899 book, The River War, written when he was 24 years old:

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 civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome. [The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pp. 248-50.]

 

Please note that the Islam that Churchill is describing as inherently a slave system, as inherently presenting an ongoing threat to Europe, is not �radical� Islam, not �political� Islam, not �Islamo-fascism.� It is traditional, normative, orthodox Islam.

Yet the very people who rush to put on Churchill�s mantle would deny this truth. Imagine if one of the speakers at that Claremont Institute dinner, where the Winston Churchill award was given to Mark Steyn, had read aloud this passage of Churchill�s. The room would have fallen into an embarrassed silence. The speaker would be seen as having committed an unpardonable offense against propriety.