by Davis Carlton

The Battle of Poiters, also known as The Battle of Tours, was fought on October 10, 732. The reason for the double name in Western sources is that the location of the battle was in the fields between these two French cities. The Frankish victory marked a clear reversal of fortunes for the progress of Muslim invasion in Europe. Had the Muslims defeated Charles Martel and his men, it is almost certain that they could have successfully overrun all of Western Europe. Edward Gibbon’s assessment of this famous macro-historical battle is well-known:

A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

Gibbon is largely correct in his analysis, but he doesn’t go far enough. Gibbon references “the schools of Oxford” as though any Western institutions of higher education could have been developed or sustained under Muslim occupation. The truth is that virtually everything that we know and experience of Western civilization would have been buried in the deluge of Saracen invasion. Muslim conquest would have meant that the transcendent beauty of our European Christian civilization would have swept away before reaching its maturity. The visual beauty of Europe would have smashed under the ugly worship of a false god. Muslim historians have tended to downplay the macro-historical significance of this defeat, but there is no question that this Christian victory played a major role in the history of Europe. The Muslims retreated into Spain where they would remain until finally ejected by native Portuguese and Spaniards during the Reconquista.

Muslims are aware of the significance of this historic defeat in their quest to conquer Europe for Islam, and many consider this a historical disaster they wish to rectify. Muslims in Poiters, France, near the location of the original battle have built a mosque named after the Arabic name of the Battle of Poitiers, Balat al-Chouhada. The naming of this mosque is entirely relevant to how the Muslims of Poiters understand their presence in modern-day France. The name for the new mosque in Arabic translates as “paved with martyrs.” The martyrs referred to are those who died fighting for Islam in their attempt to conquer Europe. By commemorating these “martyrs” in the naming of this mosque, the contemporary Muslims settled in Europe are signaling that they intend to finish the job that their eighth-century ancestors started. From an Islamic perspective the conquest of Europe remains unfinished business, and today’s Muslims intend to finish it.

This shatters the narrative that Muslims can be assimilated into European society. Muslims will take advantage of Western hospitality and magnanimity towards foreigners as a pretext for mass migration and the construction of mosques. Once Muslims have gained enough of a presence in Western countries, Muslims will seek to implement Sharia law in accordance with their beliefs, and there is no reason to believe otherwise. Some Muslims might lose their actual belief in Islam and remain culturally Muslim, as many Christians have, but the presence of a large number of Muslims who actually believe Islam to be true means that the implementation of Sharia will occur once these Muslims reach a majority, and until these Muslims do reach the tipping point we ought to expect acts of terrorism and agitation to continue apace.

This also offers a valuable though discouraging insight into the mentality of contemporary white Europeans. Many whites have abandoned the Christian faith of their ancestors and have adopted a secular humanist outlook, leaving them completely helpless against the specter of hostile invasion. France’s religious pluralism means that Muslims must be allowed to colonize France completely untrammeled. Without a strong Christian population with the convictions and desire to maintain control over the institutions of France, France is poised to become a Muslim country within this century. This is undoubtedly a divine judgement by God punishing France for several of her sins over the past centuries.

I believe that unjust Catholic persecution of Protestant Huguenots during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries contributed to what became the French Revolution in late eighteenth century. This in turn has suppressed Christian sentiment of any kind, and France has become increasingly more secularized over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The overly optimistic outlook of secular liberalism will destroy itself. Universal tolerance means that France must accept foreigners who are hostile and intolerant. But secularism is simply unsustainable and untenable over a long period of time. Secularism will ultimately give way to something more assertive and self-confident, even if that something (in this case Islam) is much worse than what preceded it. This is the end game. This is the kind of judgment that God promised to Israel for covenantal unfaithfulness. “The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail” (Deut. 28:43-44).

As with everything, the solution is repentance. Whites will be delivered from this scourge only by acknowledging that we have collectively abandoned God and now are facing the consequences for our apostasy. Jesus teaches that all who hate and reject him love death (Prov. 8:36). This is what we are seeing in France and the rest of the Western world. Fortunately we can have confident faith in Christ’s goodwill towards the faithful throughout the world, and this includes modern France. The meek will inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5), not secularists or Muslims. While those Frenchmen who have rejected God have made their covenant with death, Jesus has come to bring life more abundantly (Jn. 10:10).

Recent events portend a second Battle of Tours, and perhaps this one will be even more decisive and definitive than the first. I remain confident that God will raise up a generation of faithful Frenchmen who will one day take their country back and restore it as an inheritance to their children.

Davis Carlton is a descendant of Swiss-German farmers. He enjoys history, historical fiction, and theology. Davis appreciates traditional European culture as well as classical Christian liturgy and ecclesiology, and he desires to instill these values in the minds of fellow Christians of European descent.

See also: László Toroczkai, Defender of Hungary and Right-Wing Leader