The Greatest and Most Dangerous of All Heresies: Islam

I want to take a breather from the dizzying political circus to focus our attention to issues that are fundamental to our existence, from which the political derives it's movement and passion. It is the area of religious belief, but has catastrophic effects on our culture, politics...our way of life. This is the clash of civilizations between the Christian West and Islamic East. Our western moral relativism and religious pluralism is facing a foe that is hard to understand and difficult to appease. It behooves us to know exactly what we are dealing with in order to know how to deal with it. I suspect we will not gain anything by "hate America first" professors and ideologues. If that attitude prevails in America, we will all be forced to face Mecca; Islamists don't buy into our pluralism.

So what I'm doing is taking us down a path of history by going to a world class historian and philosopher, Hillare Belloc. I've included a link to the right, "The Great Heresy Of Mohammed" for your convenience. It is the fourth chapter of his book, "The Great Heresies." I've included some exerpts below that details the origin and doctrines of this religion.

"He (Mohammed) took over very few of those old pagan ideas which might have been native to him from his descent. On the contrary, he preached and insisted upon a whole group of ideas which were peculiar to the Catholic Church and distinguished it from the paganism which it had conquered inthe Greek and Roman civilization. Thus the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine:the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence ofGod, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels andof evil spirits in rebellion against God was a part of the teaching, witha chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side-the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life,coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death."

"If anyone sets down those points that orthodox Catholicism has in common with Mohammedanism, and those points only, one might imagine if one went no further that there should have been no cause of quarrel. Mohammed would almost seem in this aspect to be a sort of missionary, preaching and spreading by the energy of his character the chief and fundamental doctrines of the Catholic Church among those who had hitherto been degraded pagans of the Desert. He gave to Our Lord the highest reverence,and to Our Lady also, for that matter. On the day of judgment (another Catholic idea which he taught) it was Our Lord, according to Mohammed, who would be the judge of mankind, not he, Mohammed. The Mother of Christ, OurLady, "the Lady Miriam" was ever for him the first of womankind. His followers even got from the early fathers some vague hint of her Immaculate Conception. But the central point where this new heresy struck home with a mortal blow against Catholic tradition was a full denial of the Incarnation."

The entire chapter is packed with historical information that probably cannot be read at one sitting. However, the point of this post is that Islam is a highly pernicious doctrine that has catastrophic religious, economic, political and cultural effects that must be countered with a coresponding zeal. But a zeal in what?

Christianity. And might I clarify by saying Catholic Christianity. There is no other means to counter it, unless we want to be brutal atheistic socialists. However, we become as evil and deadly as the contagion we are trying to eliminate. This is going to be the focus of this blog for a time...to look into the depths of Islam, and into the depths of our Western souls to see if we have what it takes to ward off this growing threat to our existence.