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SOBRAN: Belloc’s Prophecy
Sobran.com ^ | October 25, 2001 | Joseph Sobran

Posted on 11/08/2001 11:27:01 AM PST by ouroboros

Back in the 1930s, when white men were preparing for another round of mutual slaughter, few of them paid any attention to the Muslim world. They assumed it to be a backward region that history had long since passed by.

One man saw it differently. The great Catholic polemicist Hilaire Belloc, an Englishman of French ancestry, remembered Islam’s past and predicted, in his book The Great Heresies, that it would one day challenge the West again. As late as 1683 its armies had threatened to conquer Europe, penetrating all the way to Vienna; Belloc believed that a great Islamic revival, even in the twentieth century, was altogether possible.

Belloc saw Islam not as an alien religion, but in its origins as a Christian heresy, adopting and adapting certain Christian doctrines (monotheism, the immortality of the soul, final judgment) and rejecting others (original sin, the Incarnation and divinity of Christ, the sacraments). Its simple, rational creed had a powerful appeal to Arabs who had known only the arbitrary gods of grim pagan religions. It swept the Arab world, then made converts — and conquests — far beyond Arabia.

Islam was a militant religion from the start. Mohammed himself conquered the entire Arabian Peninsula in just a few years. The new faith was torn by violent internal divisions even as it continued to spread. But spread it did, with incredible rapidity.

Christians had good reason to fear Islam, which soon conquered Spain and held it for centuries. But because Islam has little attraction for Christians, the West has generally failed to grasp its appeal for others, its profound and permanent hold on the minds of believers. Unlike the Christian West, the Muslim world has never had crises of faith like the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

Islam is a simple religion, easily understood by ordinary people. Its commandments are rigorous but few. When it conquered, its subjugated people often felt more liberated than enslaved, because it often replaced burdensome old bureaucratic governments with relatively undemanding regimes — and low taxes. As long as its authority was respected, Islamic rule was comparatively libertarian. It offered millions relief from their traditional oppression; for example, no Muslim could be a slave.

Belloc distinguishes sharply between Islam and such barbarous conquerors as the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan. The Mongols were purely destructive; they were known for slaughtering whole cities and making huge pyramids of severed heads.

Such savagery was alien to the Muslims. Where they conquered, daily life usually went on much as before and culture thrived. In many respects the Muslim world was far more civilized than Christian Europe for centuries. The West hated and dreaded Islam, but nobody would have thought of calling it backward.

That contemptuous image came much later, when modern Europe’s science, technology, and — above all — weaponry had eclipsed those of the Arabs. We are apt to forget how recently this development occurred; and, as Belloc warned, it is not irreversible.

Man, especially irreligious man, is apt to equate power and progress. Many of those who say America is “the greatest country on earth” really mean only that America has fantastic military might, capable of annihilating any other country — and some of them, at the moment, are in the mood to do some annihilating. To the pious Muslim this attitude seems crass and barbaric. He may conclude from it that the decadent West understands only one thing: force.

And would he be far wrong? Belloc admitted that the idea of a new Muslim challenge to the West seemed “fantastic,” but only because the West was “blinded” by “the immediate past.” Taking a longer view, he saw Islam, though inferior in material power, as having a great advantage: its religious faith was still strong, while the West was losing its religion and consequently its morale. He thought it entirely possible that Islam would catch up technologically, while he doubted that the West would undergo a spiritual revival.

Are we seeing the beginning of the fulfillment of Belloc’s prophecy? If so, the current uproar over Islamic terrorism may turn out to be a mere superficial symptom of a much larger historical drama. The West is still strong, but it is dying. Islam is still weak, but it is growing. Never mind the terrorists; check the birthrates.


TOPICS: Editorial; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: hilairebelloc; sobran
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To: ex-snook
We are on the verge of a 3-front struggle with the Arabs, Chinese and Russians all on a 1-war economic system.

I disagree. IMO the United States and Russia will align against Islam (in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism) and China will continue to play the wild card until they think they can act on their ambitions.

41 posted on 11/08/2001 2:11:40 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: B4Ranch
Thank you for expressing my concerns about the war on terrorism.

It's amazing how the neo-cons can support the destruction of Christianity in Bosnia and Kosovo, and then suddenly preach about the evils of Islam.

Even more amazing, that they have no concerns about the open-borders nonsense, that led to the outrage of Sept. 11 in this country.

Our politically correct leaders want us to fight Islam, yet, they tell us not to believe that Western values and Christianity are superior to Islam.

It's hard to go to war on that basis.

42 posted on 11/08/2001 2:11:42 PM PST by bulldog905
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To: dirtboy
A million men with obsolete weaponry simply cannot hold a candle to Western offensive power - and countries with high birthrates also have lower-tech economies. That's the key point Sobran overlooks here. Our military in Desert Storm suffered about as many casualties as if they had been back home getting in car wrecks or falling off ladders.

What, you think Iraq makes their own weapons?

I'm not saying that Russian and Chinese weapons (or strategists) are necessarily superior to ours ... I'm just saying that it was to their benefit strategically to give us a long kiss goodnight as they put our leadership to sleep by "winning" a war we didn't finish but rather left open so we could bang the drum of anti-US imperialism FOR THEM the next eight years with the same Clean Hands we used in Kosovo.

Don't give me any jive about the superiority of the West's forces, intelligence and weapons when it's abundantly clear that all we need is a Democrat commander in chief to get our butts kicked by Somalis.

It's for show, Dirtboy ... yin-yang, yin-yang.

43 posted on 11/08/2001 2:22:49 PM PST by Askel5
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To: ouroboros
To the pious Muslim this attitude seems crass and barbaric. He may conclude from it that the decadent West understands only one thing: force.

Oh, Sobran, give me a friggin' break. WHAT IS THE MEANS OF GOVERNMENT IN THE MUSLIM WORLD? FORCE! Dictatorship. Repression. Militarism. Totalitarianism. Constitutional Rights and elections, concepts so dear to Sobran, DON'T EXIST THERE. So spare me, Sobran, that Islam is anything but hypocritical here...

Sobran is losing it - he's entitled to his opinion, but when he sanitizes the Islamic side of the coin to make a point, he's crossing a line into being an apologist...

44 posted on 11/08/2001 2:27:28 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: Askel5
Don't give me any jive about the superiority of the West's forces, intelligence and weapons when it's abundantly clear that all we need is a Democrat commander in chief to get our butts kicked by Somalis.

That's the difference between fighting a war and attempting peacekeeping in a region not terribly interested in peace. I hope you can make that distinction.

It's for show, Dirtboy

Chris, try reading some military history...

45 posted on 11/08/2001 2:29:02 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: ouroboros
As long as its authority was respected, Islamic rule was comparatively libertarian.

Birds were allowed free flight, so long as they stayed tethered to their perch.

46 posted on 11/08/2001 2:36:44 PM PST by dighton
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To: dirtboy
I disagree. IMO the United States and Russia will align against Islam (in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism) and China will continue to play the wild card until they think they can act on their ambitions.

If and when Russia and the US ally, it will be because Russia's seeking to unstraddle itself from the East-West faultline lest it be consumed in the dragon-fire of the Hegemon. Somewhat Eastern but somewhat Western, Russia's got a little of our idiocy and hubris at work, and they've steadily empowered and worked alongside China worldwide to their own peril.

Though Russia (or the "former Soviet Union's") militant atheists (or "communists") are indeed cunning and triangulate with ease the People of the Book. Holding out Israel as bait for the West, establishing the Jews as fulcrum, they've steadily turned Christian soldiers into relativist Peace & Justice pansies who look aghast on what they presume is the "militant faith" of Islam. Likewise, their consciousness-raising among Muslims has hardened them into heretics only too happy to kill in the name of God and they gaze in equal horror (and with righteous contempt) on the wholly decadent West.

(Sure, Islam's riddled with errors such that it's easy to turn ... but what we're confronting is actually communist repression and terror UNDER COVER OF ISLAM. Listen to Putin when he offers to exert his influence in certain "circles" in the Middle East. They've been organizing them for decades. What do you think Putin's talking about when he speaks of their "circles" of influence as he offers to influence Arabs even as he defends Iran's "anti-terrorist" fighting record!)

And what other terrorists did the Soviets sponsor? Israel's Zionists, of course.

What better than the messiah-less State of Israel (particularly an Israel to which the US was as Protector to ensure, as with the drip drip drip bombing of Iraq, consistent Anti-US feeling) to "organize" the disparate and wholly declined Muslim world? Piece of cake. Israel serves as the moveable fulcrum by which to "send a message" from time to time and it keeps not only radical Islam but faithful Muslims focused.

So ... we "Christians" fighting at the behest of a government who's mandated that all men ARE NO LONGER created equal, are in a world of hurt. The only cool thing is that Russia's hubris at outsmarting the West has left it somewhat lacking in keeping tabs on the East.

The truly cosmic conflict is not going to fall between this or that faction of the People of the Book ... regardless which bully of the material world's Celestial Economic Sphere back them. It's going to fall between East and West. That's why Russia is key and that's why I pray yet every day for the true conversion (bottom up, baby) conversion of Russia.

Here's some Chesterton to round out the Belloc for you:

The Western Energy that Dethrones Tyrants

47 posted on 11/08/2001 2:43:06 PM PST by Askel5
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To: AshleyMontagu
Islam is a simple religion, easily understood by ordinary people. Its commandments are rigorous but few. When it conquered, its subjugated people often felt more liberated than enslaved, because it often replaced burdensome old bureaucratic governments with relatively undemanding regimes — and low taxes. As long as its authority was respected, Islamic rule was comparatively libertarian. It offered millions relief from their traditional oppression; for example, no Muslim could be a slave.

What the heck good are low taxes if you have no democracy, no freedom, and live in dirt poverty and under the threat of the sword if you're not moslem? No muslim could be a slave? Hmmm...maybe, but you may as well be if you're a woman because its perverse how they treat them. I love those Islamic utopian paradises like Afghanistan, Somalia et al where those people have been "liberated" from the "oppression" of other authorities.

48 posted on 11/08/2001 2:47:34 PM PST by JMJ333
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To: ThanksBTTT
Belloc, 1929:

"The Combined Effect of Proletariat and Banker will be Formidable"

But no so formidable it's going to whip the Hegemon hands down.

One minute, Uncle Prescott's on a trade junket in China and Russia delivering spanking new destroyers ... next minute it's gonna be "what's this 'we' business, white man?"

49 posted on 11/08/2001 2:50:56 PM PST by Askel5
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To: Askel5
Russia certainly looks like a bunch of drunks and wheezers with a deteriorated social structure that I find hard to envision as the prime mover in the world. But I very much appreciate your devotion to prayer for them.
50 posted on 11/08/2001 2:51:54 PM PST by gusopol3
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To: ouroboros; Askel5
Askel5 posted some of Belloc's other writings on Islam. Far less flattering. Coincidentally, I was looking for a book on European history at a college library the same week, and came across Belloc's "The Jews." I would never quote Belloc on racial characterists after reading the introduction to that book.
51 posted on 11/08/2001 3:39:50 PM PST by a history buff
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To: bulldog905
Great post. The hypocrisy stinks to high heaven.
52 posted on 11/08/2001 4:40:20 PM PST by AshleyMontagu
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To: Askel5
And who did that most righteous of men, Marc Rich, sell arms to? Answer: Iran and Iraq and China. Deserving of a pardon he sure was. Quite a God-like act.
53 posted on 11/08/2001 4:43:12 PM PST by AshleyMontagu
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To: ouroboros
The West is still strong, but it is dying. Islam is still weak, but it is growing.

------------------------

I think this is true. America has lost its sense of pride and seems to be imploding into involuted depressed degeneracy disinterested in continuing or defending itself. Islam's psychosis gives it a determination to survive. Involution loses against determination.

54 posted on 11/08/2001 5:25:03 PM PST by RLK
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To: dirtboy
I hope you get a chance to watch the rerun of Frontline -- if not the show that's playing right now.

Lying smug sons of bitches ...

I'll stand deserted with the woman on the road who knows a human when she sees one, thanks. The cabal can go to the hell it so richly deserves.

55 posted on 11/08/2001 5:50:03 PM PST by Askel5
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To: gjenkins
First voice-over as the credits roll ...

[George W. Bush]: Either you are with us are you are with the terrorists.

Strangely black and white world for some Deep Thinker who'd have us believe Christ is his favorite (narcissistic) philos-opher even as he uses our money to perpetuate the selling of human life for "hopeful" scrap.

56 posted on 11/08/2001 5:58:04 PM PST by Askel5
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To: ThanksBTTT
And then, we got to the American flag, which was quite close [and he asked] "if that's the bad guys, what does that one represent?" I said, "Well, that one represents the good guys – that's us." But, you know something my friends, if we keep going the way we're going, persisting in the path that we have persisted in … then we, the very country that more than once in this century has saved the world from the shadow of the worst evils will no longer be there in the 21st Century to save the world from the shadow of evil.

And worse than that … we won't save the world from that shadow because we will be casting it.

We don't get it, do we? We are either going to continue to be the country that holds before the world those ideas and standards of godly justice and liberty and decency for which so many of our patriots dies or we are going to turn into that power which plunges the world into a maelstrom of evil like nothing we have ever seen.

I frankly don't think that for American there will be a middle way. And that's the truth of it. And we are already at it. For we've had an administration that has aided and abetted and promoted and coerced the culture of death in every continent and toward every nation on the fact of the Earth already.

Using our capital and our money and our clout they have forced other nations to take the same ungodly stance toward innocent life in the womb that they take now.

So my friends, don't think that this is just some future that we are talking about. We are already far down the road toward the destruction of our republic, our conscience, our decency. The question isn't whether we will choose that road but whether we will turn back now before we pass the point of no return.

The American Heart ... the American Faith


I couldn't help but think of our Clean Hands work on Serbia's civilian convoys as I watched the bewildered woman break down, hands clasped in prayer, as she wondered why the US wouldn't stop Saddam's helicopters as they mowed down the refugees.

"We are human too."

This is America. Depends on your meaning of "is", Ma'am.

CHARLIE ROSE: We cannot, if I hear you correctly, fail here. Too much is at stake in terms of America's-- beyond the morality of the issue, but in terms of America's prestige and reputation and the credibility we have in the future. We cannot let this pass, and we cannot lose.

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: You're absolutely right.

I think this is the first really complex challenge to American global leadership. And, if we falter here, the consequences would be devastating -- in the first instance, for Europe; secondly, for the American-European relationship; thirdly, for our position in the world; and then, in a sense, more generally for the kind of world that we will be living in the next few years.

So, in a microcosm,
this is a real test case of what the world is about to be.

CHARLIE ROSE: So, if someone says to the president, ``Make the case why Kosovo is important,'' you say, ``This is a microcosm of the way the world is gonna be in the near future''?

Near future ... far future ... the one thing we know about the latest War on a Noun is that it may never end.

At least they're beginning to be more honest and up front with us.

57 posted on 11/08/2001 6:11:25 PM PST by Askel5
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To: AshleyMontagu
Do try to catch the re-run of Frontline this evening. I'm sure most will take it and run with a renewed vigor against the "Evil Saddam" ... a man so "in charge" he's got to personally call out the comrades he must liquidate and uses the men from his own daughters' beds to make a point to the dimwit West who proved a little reluctant to move along according to schedule, it seems.

I don't think I've felt such contempt for a long, long time. Though I sound it like a broken record, I've actually tried to hold in abeyance all but the tears at the much-anticipated betrayal ... the laying of the marked cards on the table ... that was Bush's Stem Cell decision.

I'm going to have a hard time keeping it at "Useful Idiot" anymore. It's time we called them what they are.

58 posted on 11/08/2001 6:21:39 PM PST by Askel5
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To: a history buff
I can post them again.

As we were trying to discuss on the original post (before the Usual Suspects trashed it), Belloc himself called himself out on what he felt was a failing with regard to certain "anti-semitic" strains in his writing.

I was upfront such that I interjected Romulus's note in that regard in the middle of the original Belloc post, if you remember.

Unfortunately, the "Adults" are not always in charge of themselves around here and it's tough to sift the wheat from the chaff without someone screaming 'HATE CRIME' and wiping the slate clean like some Soviet revisionist.

59 posted on 11/08/2001 6:25:26 PM PST by Askel5
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To: gusopol3
Russia certainly looks like a bunch of drunks and wheezers with a deteriorated social structure that I find hard to envision as the prime mover in the world.

You might say the same about us, actually.

I didn't find Russians to be thus at all ... save for a few prairie dog appearances on the sidewalks outside some outer-lying subway stations while lost on the Moscow metro one day.

In fact, I saw much that I admired there. Even though it's a top-down thing in many respects (which I totally distrust) in many respects, I marveled at and admired very much their spirit, their resilience and the way many are taking full advantage of this opportunity to strengthen themselves with remembrance and renewed veneration of God, family, history, culture and nationalism.

Again, depending on how long the shock therapy of September 11th works for a thoroughly materialistic, decadent and relativist America, they may still clean our clocks but I do hope and pray "in a good way".

If any nation may be said to have hung on the cross with Christ, it is Russia. It's not as if they escaped somehow the terror, starvation, repression and slaughter imposed by their militant communist leadership on others. They suffered it in spades themselves.

If they are hardened, in large part it's due to the scars they bear.

60 posted on 11/08/2001 6:40:19 PM PST by Askel5
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