Last month, a group of Islamic terrorists attacked the predominantly Christian village of Yelewata, killing three local residents and injuring three more. A few months earlier, the same group attacked the same village and killed 200 people, many of whom were refugees from other villages suffering similar attacks from Islamist terrorists.
Understandably, the people in Yelewata have appealed to their government for protection from Islamist terrorists. Thus far, President Bola Tinubu has done little to address this problem.
Of course, it doesn’t help that journalists reporting on these attacks cast them as mere “land disputes” and “ethnic conflicts” between herders and farmers, not Islamist jihadist attacks. Sure, the attacks are always one-sided and the attackers scream “Allahu Akhbar,” but religion never seems to be a motivating factor for some reason.
Despite the good intentions behind this framing, it essentially guarantees that Islamist terrorism and Christian persecution will continue in Nigeria and the rest of the Muslim world. More churches will burn, more Christian men will be slaughtered, and more Christian women, boys, and girls will be raped and sold into slavery. Worse still, the West will continue to ignore these atrocities and blithely welcome ever more Islamist migrants into their own countries.
Collective Amnesia
Although President Donald Trump was ultimately right in ending nation-building and fighting “stupid wars” in the Middle East, one consequence of this move has been a collective amnesia about Islamism. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the military campaigns that followed, Americans had a crash course on this topic, often learning the hard way just how destructive political Islam was.
It became apparent that Islamism was fundamentally incompatible with Western liberalism. People in the Muslim world did not seem interested in becoming modern pluralist democracies with a constitutional order, a bill of rights guaranteeing personal freedoms, and free markets. Rather, when given the power to vote for their leaders, they often voted for some version of Islamist totalitarianism that imposed Sharia law, stripped rights from women and minorities, systematically persecuted different Muslim sects and other religions, and based their national wealth on oil reserves and foreign aid.
Indeed, the biggest lesson of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan was that countries in the Muslim world usually have two political systems: Islamist theocracies or secular authoritarianism. The second biggest lesson is that a secular strongman tends to be a better option than a Muslim brotherhood. For all the brutality, stupidity, and corruption of Bashar Assad, Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, or Muammar Gaddafi, they brought more stability to their countries, protections to minorities, and respite from terrorism than the Muslim regimes that replaced them.
Blaming Ourselves
While Americans now blame their own nation’s interventions for the collapse of these countries, this is only partly true and tends to cover a darker fact about the Muslim world. These nations collapsed because of Islamism. As historian Raymond Ibrahim argued in his excellent history Sword and Scimitar, Islam was a religion that primarily spread by the sword and provided divine sanction for raiding, persecution, and deception.
What Christian culture would normally consider immoral (like killing innocent people or enslaving them) is often encouraged in an Islamist society if it is done in the name of spreading Islam. While the moral standard in Christianity is Jesus and His disciples who sacrifice themselves for others, the moral standard in Islam is Mohammed and his successors who conquered cities and forced people to submit to their rule. Christianity holds that all human beings have dignity and value; Islam does not advocate this, especially when it comes to non-Muslims.
The political effects of these differences explain everything that afflicts the Muslim world today. The violence, instability, the oppression, the lack of cooperation, and general backwardness are built into the system. Ever since its inception in seventh century Saudi Arabia, political Islam had the effect of halting and gradually reversing the civilizations it takes over. The principles it establishes prevent the emergence of the institutions that enable material, political, and social progress.
Nevertheless, aside from Ibrahim a few other brave scholars, historians blame the stagnation and regression of the Muslim world on anything except the very faith that defines it. Usually, they blame European colonialism or American interventionism for corrupting otherwise functional systems. Inexplicably, the ideas that work quite well in Christian societies do the opposite in Muslim societies.
Murky Thoughts
This muddled reasoning is on full display in a recent essay published in The American Conservative. Foreign policy analyst Leon Hadar claims that “Levantine societies had perfected the art of commercial and cultural interdependence across religious and ethnic lines,” but this was ruined by “the toxic combination of imported European nationalism and the heavy hand of modern state intervention.” Evidently, the centuries of Muslim leadership that reduced non-Muslims to second-class citizens, enforced restrictions on individual freedom, and never bothered to educate their own people had little to do with the Levant’s current dysfunction.
In fairness to Hadar, he is right to claim that modern Western political ideals failed to effectively address the preexisting diversity of the Levant. And he is right to criticize the Islamist versions of these ideas that have reduced formerly prosperous areas like Lebanon, Gaza, and Syria to chaotic backwaters. Yet, he never seems to mention the notable exception of Israel, which continues to thrive with a diverse population — unlike its neighbors.
Perhaps in the past decade, most Westerners could afford to be somewhat naive about all this. Now, however, with the mass influx of migrants from the Muslim world as well as current Christian culture dwindling into irrelevance, no one should indulge these fantasies about Islamism and what it portends for modern society.
Rather, they should confront it seriously and directly. This does not mean reigniting the Crusades, but it does mean asserting Christian principles and policies and taking a realist approach with the Muslim world. No longer can Westerners excuse Islamist terrorism or morally equate Islamist priorities with Western ones, nor should they censor people with valid grievances and arguments.
If this sounds extreme, we should remember it is exactly what is done with ideologies like Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. Most Westerners can recognize the dangers posed by these systems and recognize their effects on a society. The same should apply to Islamism. It is the oldest of the anti-liberal ideologies and continues to cast its dark shadow on half of the world. If the Christian West is not careful, this shadow will spread and put out the few spiritual lights still remaining.
Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher and freelance writer in the Dallas area. He is the founding editor of The Everyman, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and has written for essays for The Stream, The Blaze, Chronicles, and elsewhere. He is also the host of The Everyman Commentary Podcast. Follow him on X.
