January 14, 2002, Journal, Belloc's Prophecy, Islam was a militant religion from the start.

“Back in the 1930’s when 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 Hereries", that it would one day challenge the West again. As late as 1683 its army is had threatened to conquer Europe, penetrating all the way to Vienna; Billoc believed that a great Islamic revival, even in the 20th-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 doctrine (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 arbitrary gods of grim pagan religions. It swept the Arab world, then made converts and conquest far beyond the Arabia. Islam was a militant religion from the start. Mohammed himself covered the entire Arabian peninsular 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, it's compound 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. This Commandments are rigorous but few. When it conquered, its subjugated people often felt more liberated than enslaved, because it often replaced the burden of old bureaucratic governments with relatively undemanding regimes and low taxes. As long as it 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 as the Mongol hordes of Genghis Klan. 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 of 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. Men, especially the 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 those annihilating. To the pious Muslin this attitude seems crass and barbaric.

He may conclude from it that the decadent West understands only on thing: Force. 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 symbol. Of a much greater historical drama”. Spare us Lord from this awful threat as the scorpion of the desert as per the Revelation comes like locust upon us causing our despair in all the confusion.