The War That Shall Not Be Mentioned

The Herald Sun editorial on Sunday represents the naïvity of far too many. It is entitled “We will never understand such hatred”, as if the massacres in Paris were a form of irrational madness driven by some unknown motivation. Here is the central point of that editorial:

Whatever name the terrorists may use to describe themselves, we already know exactly who they are: monstrous, bigoted and cruel Islamic murderers who have betrayed the very mothers that gave birth to them in their deliberate relinquishment of all that humanity holds dear.

We will never understand what motivates such hatred. To do so would require a guided tour of the most blackened and fouled souls.

So let me explain. The Islamic State is at war with us because they wish to convert us to Islam. You may think that the way the war is being waged is cruel and monstrous, but it is no more cruel and monstrous than many a war in the past. What makes this war so bizarre is that the kinds of people who write such editorials do not even know we are in the midst of a war. It is a war for control of territory, in just the same way every other war in history has been fought. They are attacking us and our civilisation relentlessly. They are attempting to achieve the same result that Nazis and Soviet communists attempted. They are trying to change our way of life into their way of life through force of arms. They are trying to take our territory from us and replace our way of doing things with theirs.

This is a war that has been on-going for the past 1500 years, with Islamic expansion the aim since the seventh century. What makes this war novel is that, until now, each invasion has come in the form of an actual army, and the battles have been armed conflicts. There are many such battles where Islam has won, such as across the whole of North Africa in the seventh century and Constantinople in 1453. And there are others that it has lost, such as Lepanto, the Battle of Tours and, on two occasions, before the gates of Vienna. But the war has never stopped, although our modern ignorance of history has made all of this invisible to the vast majority of the population of the formerly-Christian West.

They have a value system and we have a value system. The reality is that in any territory only one of these systems can prevail at any one time. The Western view, our view, is that we can all get along together, with religion a private matter between each of us as individuals and our own consciences. That is not the view of those who are waging war on behalf of the Islamic State. For them, there is only one true belief, and if in some as-yet-unconquered territory it is not their beliefs that prevail, then according to their own beliefs they have the right to kill us, enslave our women and force us to convert to Islam at the point of a sword. You can see all of this unfolding at the moment across the Middle East.

That is the war we are in. And because we are not fighting this in the same kind of desperate way we fought the Nazis and the Soviets we are losing. They are playing on our ignorance, which has allowed a million invaders to enter Europe, the ultimate aim of their leaders being to convert each and every one of us to Islam.

You may deny that is the intent, but it is. You may think they could not possibly do it, but they can. And if we do not resist this invasion, they will succeed. It may already be too late, so that by 2084 – a century after 1984 – most of what had once been the West may be under Sharia law. History is like that. Nothing is pre-ordained.

You will never understand what motivates those on the other side of this conflict if you do not make at least make the effort to see what their war aims are. And so long as our political leaders fail to recognise, or refuse to recognise, what they are trying to achieve, we will continue to lose ground. We are losing it today and every day, until it is too late.