July 28, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
On June 26, Saif Rezgui walked on to a beach in Tunisia and opened fire on German, British, and Irish sunbathers in front of the Imperial Marhaba resort hotel, killing 39 and wounding dozens more. If various world leaders are to be believed, the massacre had nothing to do with Islam. In response to the [...]
July 22, 2015
by Fr. James V. Schall
The laws of several western countries, besides the Islamic ones themselves, do not permit anything critical to be said of Islam. Such laws forbid what is called “hate speech.” They often include other sub-groups like homosexuals, women, or race. Such laws and customs have practically reduced responsible freedom of speech to a dead letter. Fines [...]
July 9, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
During the Second World War, Americans naturally had a strong interest in events in Europe. The war in Europe was the stuff of daily headlines in the U.S., and this interest in European affairs continued for a long time afterwards. Americans recognized that their own fate was tied to that of their allies across the [...]
June 22, 2015
by Tom Jay
On June 7, the bombast of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan finally caught up with him. In violation of Turkish campaigning laws, Erdoğan publicly and vehemently warned Turks of the disaster that would ensue in their country if they did not give his party, the AKP, the 367 seats in Parliament necessary to act unilaterally. [...]
June 19, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
If you’ve ever noticed that U.S. policy in regard to the war on terror is confused, you’ll appreciate Stephen Coughlin’s just released book, Catastrophic Failure: Blindfolding America in the Face of Jihad. The confusion is no accident, says Coughlin, but is the result of a deliberate Muslim Brotherhood plan to influence decision-making at the highest [...]
May 26, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
The recent “draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas not only drew fire from two armed jihadists, it also drew fire from Christian leaders and media critics. One of the chief objections was that events of this type will alienate moderate Muslims and possibly drive them into the radical camp. It can just as easily be [...]
May 13, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
We often hear it said that it is simply wrong to insult the faith of 1.3 billion Muslims. Why, then, isn’t it wrong to insult the faith of 2.2 billion Christians? It’s done every day, and sometimes the insults are hard to take. Christians are understandably upset when art exhibits feature crucifixes immersed in urine [...]
May 6, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
You’ve probably heard about the cancellation of a showing of the film American Sniper at the University of Michigan. The film was cancelled in response to a student petition protesting that the film was racist and anti-Muslim. The initiator of the petition told the Detroit Free Press that she felt “uncomfortable” watching it. The university [...]
March 25, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
If ISIS is defeated in Iraq and Syria, it’s likely that the Western world will breathe a collective sigh of relief. Many will assume that with the defeat of the supposedly un-Islamic Islamic State, things will return to normal—or, at least, to what passes for normal in the Middle East. As long as the beheadings, [...]
February 26, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
According to a report in the Daily Mail, there are more Muslim than Christian children in Birmingham, England’s second largest city. The same is true in a number of other large and mid-size cities—in Luton, Leicester, Bradford, and Slough. At least three boroughs in London have more Muslim than Christian children, including Tower Hamlets, which [...]
February 11, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
In his book America Alone, Mark Steyn observed that “there is no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.” He was referring to Christianity’s loss of faith in itself as exemplified by the decline of Christianity in Europe and the corresponding rise of Islam—a faith that does have faith in itself. A [...]
February 4, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
In my last column, I promised to propose an alternative to the Church’s current policy toward Islam. The main question I raised then can be put this way: If there is something in Islam itself that is conducive to violence, should Church leaders say so, or should they, for prudential reasons, keep echoing the secular [...]
January 28, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
In a speech to Egypt’s top Islamic authorities, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a “religious revolution.” Why? Because he believes that Islam has problems: “That corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries … is antagonizing the entire world.” He continued: “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want [...]
January 26, 2015
by Regis Martin
It was during the great slugfest of 1968, which marked the beginning of a fierce and protracted battle for the soul of America, that I threw my first electoral punch. Doing my bit, you might say, to help Richard Nixon deliver the necessary knockout blow to the Democrats. Here (I thought) was the Party of [...]
January 13, 2015
by Timothy J. Gordon
The week after the Islamic murder of twelve Charlie Hebdo employees and several French police officers, the popular American discourse as to what qualifies as "relevant" to the event is becoming increasingly narrow. Notwithstanding the popular insistence upon a singular moral in the sad event, indeed it should be seen as a manifold, or at least [...]
January 9, 2015
by William Kilpatrick
Question: How would a Catholic bishop respond to tens of thousands of peaceful citizens singing Silent Night in the center of an historic European city? Answer: He would forbid Christians to take part. On December 22, 18,000 demonstrators, many of them families with children, marched against “Islamization” and sang Christmas carols in front of Dresden’s [...]
December 22, 2014
by William Kilpatrick
In his 1970 bestseller Future Shock, Alvin Toffler wrote about the stress and disorientation caused by “too much change in too short a period of time.” According to Toffler, more and more Americans were experiencing a sense of dislocation as a result of increased mobility, frequent career moves, and sudden lifestyle changes. Forty-five years later, [...]
December 9, 2014
by William Kilpatrick
G.K. Chesterton had a knack for anticipating future trends but when, in his 1914 novel The Flying Inn, he anticipated the Islamization of England, it seemed so far out of the realm of possibility that it was difficult to take it as anything but a flight of fancy. True enough, the book has a whimsical, [...]
October 27, 2014
by Fr. George W. Rutler
Nine years as chaplain of an 800 bed state mental hospital taught me that one can be mentally ill and highly intelligent. Talking with the patients often was more interesting than talking with their psychiatrists. Mad men are not mindless. They just do not distinguish between delusion and fact. Chesterton summed this up by aphorism: “The madman [...]
October 23, 2014
by William Kilpatrick
In a recent column, I suggested that one of the best ways to fight terrorism is by undermining the terrorist’s ideology. For example, by undercutting the belief that seventy-two virgins await the young martyr in paradise, you simultaneously undermine the will to fight. That’s not to say that the standard method of fighting terrorists—with guns—can [...]