Image: Battle of Lepanto

I wonder why the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy does not understand Islam’s war against our Church and Christianity. Many sources speak of the terrors induced daily against members of the flock. This war was as intense in the 15th century as it is now.

The historical record shows the great battles between the two religions. The Ottomans invaded the European landmass after the defeat of the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople in 1453. They established a caliphate and pressed into Europe. They captured Buda in Hungary in 1541. The battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571, with the victory of the Holy League, stymied Muslim expansion. Further defeat of the caliphate occurred in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, with the help of the Polish army. In 1699, the Ottoman caliphate gave the Hapsburgs territory previously taken.

These later setbacks for Islam, it seems, have not been forgotten.

When I studied Turkish history in 1963, while a member of the U.S. Air Force stationed there, the professor, a Turkish judge, told us that the memory of these defeats burns in the hearts of the Islamic people. He stated that the Turkish flag with the crescent moon and star was chosen because of a prophecy: when that sight occurs in the heavens, the Muslims will rise again. The prophecy, I was told, dates back to the 1600s.

My wife and I, while vacationing in Egypt in September 1992, saw this sight during the day while riding a bus to our airplane to return to Cairo. Less than two weeks later, attacks started against foreigners. A warning was given at the end of September for foreigners not to travel in the province of Qena in Egypt. The attacks on foreigners occurred immediately after the warning. We had traveled from Hurgada to Luxor through Qena two weeks prior and stopped at the small town where an attack happened later.

We met with Coptic Christians, who showed us the cross tattoos on their arms and mentioned how mistreated they were. We were directed to a Coptic church where the Blessed Mother is said to have appeared to over one million people, including the then-president of Egypt. The church has a large dome mosaic of the Blessed Mother. Just last year, another Coptic church, right near the one we visited, was bombed, and many were killed.

Can our Church leaders say Islam is a true religion when it rejects the divinity of Jesus Christ and calls for the extermination of Christianity?

Church leaders do not recognize that we are in a war – not only for hearts and minds, but also for souls. Church leaders are not working to prevent the slowdown the stealth invasion of Western lands and societies. This invasion comes in many forms – not just through jihad, but also in the realms of education, military life, government, culture, and interfaith dialogue.

While traveling throughout the Middle East, we were shown the Islamic schools and how young children memorize the Koran. The culture and the religion were totally together.

The Republic of Turkey, after the end of the Ottoman Empire, became a secular government. I remember in the 1970s speaking with Turkish students at Michigan State University about their battle with Islamists, who were making inroads in Turkish society by little steps – for example, the fight to allow wearing headscarves. The madrassas were also making sure their students were the best educated so they could get the best jobs in the government. The battle lasted decades, and the Islamists won. Turkey now is an Islamic state, and Christianity is becoming a very small presence there.

The battle to end Christianity is approaching its conclusion in some European countries, with lines being drawn in the U.S. as well. Western societies have made a Muslim takeover that much easier through birth-control and abortions, through which the West has lost its sustainable population. How our generation behaves could determine whether the Western way of life continues.

Our Church, our culture, our society, our people do not have long to wake up. We need to fight for souls. We need to pray for all people. We cannot stay silent and passive.

There is a stealth war against Christianity. It is a war the Church hierarchy does not see.