In a 1934 speech before the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said this:

“Germany is arming fast, and no one is going to stop her. I dread the day when the means of threatening the heart of the British Empire should pass into the hands of the present rulers of Germany … I dread that day, but it is not, perhaps, far distant.”

For this he was called a “warmonger.” But Churchill was, we now know, prophetic.

The days in which we live are not so different from the 1930s. In Islamic fundamentalism the West faces the greatest threat to its existence since the Second World War. And like those times, we are sleep walking through it. Not only do Western leaders — and even the Pope — refuse to acknowledge the causal link between Islam and terrorism, they have become facilitators of terrorism through the sheer idiocy of unrestricted mass immigration policies. In so doing, they have casually endangered and sacrificed the lives of the citizens they are sworn to protect — all for the sake of a utopian social experiment.

In the 1930s, it was chiefly persecution of the Jews that went ignored by Western media and governments. Today it is not only the Jewish people, but Christians most of all.

According to the Spectator (UK), “80 percent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet…. In effect, the world is witnessing the rise of an entirely new generation of Christian martyrs. The carnage is occurring on such a vast scale that it represents not only the most dramatic Christian story of our time, but arguably the premier human rights challenge of this era as well.”

The primary oppressor of Christians and Jews (and other Muslims) is Islam. The Archbishop of Erbil (in Iraq), Bashar Warda, has said that the threat posed by ISIS is enough to bring about “the extinction of Christianity as a religion and as a culture in Mesopotamia.”

According to the Global Terrorism Index, there has been a fivefold increase in fatalities from terrorist acts since 9/11. Four groups are responsible for most of these. All of them are Islamic.

You see, whether or not so-called “radical Islam” is the representative of the Islamic faith is irrelevant; that it is a representative of that religion is undeniable. It simply won’t do to characterize ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, etc. as fringe elements of Islam. These groups occupy whole countries, not a mosque or two.

Furthermore, the data indicates that these groups enjoy a great deal of support among Muslims globally. A February 2015 BBC poll of British Muslims found that 27 percent were “sympathetic” with the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

The BBC headline read reassuringly: “… an overwhelming majority of British Muslims oppose the use of violence…” 27 percent is not a majority, but 1 in 4 is hardly nothing. That translates to roughly 700,000 Muslims in Britain alone. Imagine if 1 in 4 Christians were “sympathetic” with abortion clinic bombings. I dare say the headline would not read: “An overwhelming majority of Christians oppose the use of violence.” No, we would hear about the potential terrorists in our midst.

Are all Muslims terrorists or would-be terrorists? Of course not. But theirs is a religion with a disproportionate number of adherents who believe that when Islam is practiced faithfully it means non-Muslims must convert or die.

Like the Allies in the lead-up to the Second World War, there is a comprehensive failure on the part of Western leaders to understand the nature of this threat.

Why?

There are, I think, three main reasons, all of which are due to Christianity’s waning influence in the West:

The first is secularism. Secularism renders the West ill-equipped to understand an absolutist religious mindset like that of Islam. All conflicts are understood to be misunderstandings. People, it is assumed, act out of rational self-interest unless they are insane. This is because secularists, absent any theology, have no understanding of evil. Note the narrative after every terrorist attack — the perpetrators were, we are told, unhinged or reacting to Western oppression (thus it is our fault) rather than faithful followers of their religion. While the Ayatollah called for “death to America” during that country’s nuclear negotiations with the U.S., the Obama Administration dismissed his remarks as rhetoric “aimed at an Iranian domestic political audience.” Leftist politicians said the same thing of Mein Kampf. History has demonstrated all too painfully that Hitler meant every word of it.

The second is political correctness. In the headlong rush to embrace diversity for diversity’s sake, no longer can we say as a people: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Truth itself is deemed an abstract, fuzzy concept. Conflict, therefore, is avoided by acknowledging no truth, no culture as superior to another. But this is nonsense. Were Western values superior to those of Imperial Japan? Yes. And they are superior to those of North Korea and any Islamic state you care to name.

The third reason is the Left’s abiding hatred for Christianity. Christianity is all that stands between them and the fulfillment of their sordid domestic agenda, hence they waste no time attacking it and befriending Christianity’s global rival, Islam. They do so at their own peril. Don’t like the Christian position on homosexuality? Wait till you get a load of the Islamic view.

Commenting on the Japanese surrender ceremony, Toshikazu Kase, Japan’s foreign minister and signer of the document, wrote this immediately following the surrender to the Emperor: “After all, we were not beaten on the battlefield by dint of superior arms alone. We were defeated in a spiritual contest by virtue of a nobler idea.”

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, a storm gathers on the eastern horizon. We are engaged in a spiritual contest, a global war, and Christianity is unquestionably the nobler idea.