Hilaire Belloc [*] on Islam
"We thought of its (Islam’s) religion as a sort of fossilised thing about which we need not trouble. That was almost certainly a mistake. We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our Faith it will arise. For after this subjugation of the Islamic culture by nominally Christian nations had already been achieved, the political consequences of that culture began to notice two disquieting features about it. The first was that its spiritual foundation proved immovable; the second that its area of occupation did not recede, but on the contrary slowly expanded."
Hilaire Belloc, "Survivals and New Arrivals," 1929
"It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years its greatest opponent.... The future always comes as a surprise but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam. Since religion is at the root of all political movements and changes and since we have here a very great religion physically paralysed but morally intensely alive, we are in the presence of an unstable equilibrium which cannot remain permanently unstable."
Hilaire Belloc, "The Great Heresies," 1938
[*] Belloc:
"He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds, but also widely regarded as a humane and sympathetic man."
