July 22, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The Church “really should be afraid” of Islam and its inability to peacefully coexist with other religions, Cardinal Raymond Burke warns in a new book-length interview.

In Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ, Burke, who is the former Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura and currently serves as the patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, addresses a host of topics relevant to the Catholic Church and the modern world, such as liturgy, marriage and family, and the pro-life cause. In Hope for the World and in a recent interview with Religion News Service, Burke said that Islam poses a threat to Christians and Western civilization.

“There’s no question that Islam wants to govern the world,” said Burke. He related the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to the battle against Islamic extremism in modern times. The Battle of Lepanto prevented the expansion of the Ottoman Empire into parts of Europe. The Battle of Vienna is often viewed as the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

“When [Muslims] become a majority in any country then they have the religious obligation to govern that country,” he said. “If that’s what the citizens of a nation want, well, then, they should just allow this to go on. But if that’s not what they want, then they have to find a way to deal with it.”

“There is no place for other religions...as long as Islam has not succeeded in establishing its sovereignty over the nations and over the world,” Burke said in Hope for the World.

“It is important for Christians to realize the radical differences between Islam and Christianity in matters concerning their teaching about God, about conscience, etc.,” said Burke. “If you really understand Islam, you understand that the Church really should be afraid of it.”

“Islam is a religion that, according to its own interpretation, must also become the State,” he continued.

Burke said the appropriate response to this growing threat “is to be firm about the Christian origin of our own nation, and certainly in Europe, and the Christian foundations of the government, and to fortify those.”

He also blasted Catholic leaders who think Islam is “a religion like the Catholic faith or the Jewish faith.”

“That simply is not objectively the case,” he said.

Burke is not the only Catholic cardinal who has expressed concern about the spread of Islam. In June, Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship, called Islamic fundamentalism a “demonic” and “apocalyptic” beast along with the “idolatry of Western freedom.”