Peter Mullen
The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal.
Islamist terrorism is beginning to demolish political correctness
Islamic fundamentalists are irreconcilable
It was refreshing to read such a plain and unequivocal line in today’s editorial column: “The simple fact is that Islamic fundamentalists are irreconcilable. To them the US will remain the Great Satan.” This was, of course, a comment on the murder of the US ambassador to Libya.
I wonder if, in the midst of all this horror, we might begin to see signs of hope? I mean, might we at last be beginning to escape the mealy-mouthed world of all that has for long remained unsayable. Perhaps there are, after all, limits to political correctness. I dare to breathe the hope that maybe western societies will not die the death of a thousand euphemisms. I thought I detected signs of this dawning sanity just after 9/11. We were shocked into reality then. And we were geared for war. People expected it. There was a creepy silence in the streets of the City of London. Weekday attendances at our lunchtime Eucharists doubled and tripled. There were reassuring signs of seriousness. Then, within a few weeks, under a barrage of media propaganda telling us that 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam, euphemistic orthodoxy and the fatal disease of appeasement returned.
It has been with us ever since. The Ministry of Truth operated by the Guardianistas and the BBC have delighted in what they call “The Arab Spring,” as if this heralded the advent of “democracy” all across North Africa and the Middle East. As we now learn from events in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, the Sinai – and most recently in Libya – this was always a delusion, a perversion of reality flying in the face of the facts.
The fact is that a resurgent, militant anti-western Islamic fundamentalism is the gravest threat to civilisation. This is bad news of course. But the good news – as evinced in today’s editorial column – is that finally we are being allowed to name this peril for what it is.
Militant fanaticism wherever and whenever it arises has to be resisted and put down. It was defeated at the Battle of Tours in AD 732. At the siege of Malta in 1565. At Lepanto in 1571. It is not so many centuries since the barbarians were at the gates of Vienna. And without our resistance they will soon be there again.
Don’t take my word for all this. As long ago as the 1820s, Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the scene as:
That erection of a temporal monarch under the pretence of a spiritual authority, which was not possible in Christendom but by the extinction or entrancement of the spirit of Christianity: this was effected in full by Mahomet, to the establishment of the most extensive and complete despotism that ever warred against civilisation and the interests of humanity.
Do I learn from this morning’s editorial that we are at last being allowed to recognise and state this truth? If so, then however dark the hour, there are grounds for hope.
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