Why Muslims Win and We Lose

Muslims fight for something. We fight against that something.

This is the big difference. We are fighting purely in defence. We don't have the same passion.

They are fighting for Islam. We don't like it, but we must admit that it is a whole system of living one's life, guiding a state and establishing its laws.

What are we fighting for? The ability to believe in nothing, pursue as many material possessions as we can, dissipate our lives and use as many swear words as is humanly possible. Big deal! That is really going to put fire in our belly, certainly.

People can be prepared to die only for something they believe in with all of themselves.

That's why Christian martyrs are legions while it's difficult to come up with many secular martyrs.

And people can fight with courage and ardour only for something that excites their imagination.

That's why Christian Europe was capable of repeatedly defeating Islamic enemies and remain free, while post-Christian Europe is doomed.

Here's how the great Pat Buchanan puts it:

T.S. Eliot said, to defeat a religion, you need a religion.

We have no religion; we have an ideology—secular democracy. But the Muslim world rejects secularism and will use democracy to free itself of us and establish regimes that please Allah.

In the struggle between democracy and Allah, we are children of a lesser God. “The term ‘democracy,’” wrote Eliot, “does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike — it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God … you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

Germany used democracy to bring Hitler to power. Given free elections from Morocco to Mindanao, what kind of regimes would rise to power? Would not the Quran become the basis of law?

If Charlie Hebdo were a man, not a magazine, he would be torn to pieces in any Middle East nation into which he ventured. And what does a mindless West offer as the apotheosis of democracy?

Four million French marching under the banner “Je Suis Charlie.”

Whom the gods would destroy …

The first comment on Buchanan's article shows the shallowness of the materialistic view:

Napoleon once said “God is on the side of he who has the strongest battalion.” Not: “The strongest ideology”. History is littered with the corpses of intense oddball gangs that tried to hit way above their league and were crushed. Bullets and bombs are ruled by mere physics, not fervor.

There are indeed many more cases in history of armies or armed groups who defeated stronger forces. If combatants are not motivated, they will flee or surrender.

It's people who fight, with whatever is in their minds egging them on. Weapons - even the most sophisticated - don't fight. The laws of "mere physics" can do nothing in war without a desire to utilise them.

In the case of our decadent Western societies, in which living a comfortable and easy life is a primary goal, fighting whatever or whoever threatens this cosiness defeats the object. So, given a choice between losing comforts and security in the future for not having defended them or losing them now in order to defend them, people prefer to wait and see if any possible danger will disappear as if by magic. When they are convinced that it won't, it will probably be too late to put up a resistance.

But hey!, at least we have protected - by doing nothing - our desire to believe in nothing.