Dakota Beacon

“There is no new thing under the sun.” So says the Preacher, son of David, King of Jerusalem, in the Book of Ecclasiastes. This is an astute observation for the ages.

Relations between Islam and the West have been strained throughout history. The cornerstone of Islamic education centers on the year 630 AD when the Arab prophet Muhammad forged the Arab people into a nation with a fighting religion. Their destiny was to bring the word of Allah and Islamic rule to all mankind.

Within one hundred years from the death of the prophet Muhammed, Muslim Arabs conquered the world from India to southern France including the Middle East, Persia, the Asian interior, North Africa, Asia Minor and Spain. However, the Islamic expansion into southern Europe was halted in 732 AD at the Battle of Poitiers, 180 miles south of Paris. Charles Martel (The Hammer) defeated the Islamic cavalry invaders with his heavy infantry. Had that not occurred, Europe would be Muslim today and the Koran taught at Oxford, England – a fact that Islamic culture has not forgotten for 950 years.

Thwarted in their attempt to push north, the forces of Allah turned east skirting the Mediterranean. The thrust dissipated in Italy. As an aside, Othello, Shakespeare’s character, was a Moor descended from the Islamic occupation of Spain.

The second notable deterrent to Islamic expansion was the defeat of the Islamic navy at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 in the Gulf of Corinth. The Holy League comprised of Venice, Spain and the Papal States engaged the Ottoman fleet for four hours. At the end of that time a combined 40,000 were dead on both sides ranking Lepanto with Salamis, Cannae, and the Somme as one of the bloodiest single-day battles in history. When it was over, two-thirds of the galleys of the Ottoman Mediterranean fleet lay destroyed.

Lepanto, like Poitiers, was a watershed event in the history of East-West relations. The Western Mediterranean, previously an Islamic lake, was secure for European shipping. As with the Muslims after Poitiers, the immediate Islamic threat to Europe was greatly diminished. Nevertheless, the Ottoman advance over the next two centuries would sweep into Hungary and terminate at the gates of Vienna.

In a continuing effort to consolidate an Islamic caliphate, the Turkish Army from the Ottoman Empire attacked Vienna in 1683. Vienna at the time served as the dominant power in Eastern Europe. The dream of a caliphate brought the Ottoman sultan to the gates of Vienna. The defeat of the Islamic army at Vienna, with the help of the German and Polish armies, again dashed the hopes of establishing an Islamic caliphate over Europe. That hope lay dormant for the next three centuries until the post-WWII period.

A resurgence of the hope of a caliphate has manifested itself in worldwide terrorism directed against the West. Many incidents in recent decades contains this common thread. A brief, incomplete list follows: 1972 Munich Olympic athletes killed, 1972 Pan Am 747 hijacked and destroyed, 1973 Pan Am 707 destroyed in Rome, 1979 US embassy in Iran taken over and hostages held 444 days, 1983 US Marine barracks in Beirut blown up, 1985 cruise ship Achille Lauro hijacked, 1985-1988 other aircraft hijacked, 1993 first bombing of World Trade Center, 1998 US embassies bombed in Kenya and Tanzania, 2001 World Trade Center attacked and destroyed, 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl beheaded, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. These were not isolated acts of gangsters and criminals, but were deliberate acts of hostile Islamists.

This review of the history of Islamic confrontation with the West is not to condemn Muslim people. It is to condemn the spirit and motivation to conquer and subjugate other cultures.

The fight for Islamic dominance over 1300 years has not gone well for Muslims. Nevertheless, the universal longing, kept alive in the education of Muslim children for a great leader, or caliph, continues in the attempt to set right the perceived historic wrong. The longed-for resurrection of the glory of Islam will be achieved by the defeat of Western dominance and the worldwide imposition of full sharia – Islamic law.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven….A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” Like it or not, it appears we are in a time of war.

So, how does the Preacher in the Book of Ecclasiastes conclude? “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).