CULTURES SPRING FROM religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude towards the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it -- we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today. The bad work begun at the Reformation is bearing its final fruit in the dissolution of our ancestral doctrines -- the very structure of our society is dissolving.
In place of the old Christian enthusiasms of Europe there came, for a time, the enthusiasm for nationality, the religion of patriotism. But self-worship is not enough, and the forces which are making for the destruction of our culture ... have a likelier future before them than our old-fashioned patriotisms.
In Islam, there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine -- or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe. The whole spiritual strength of Islam is still present in the masses of Syria and Anatolia, of the East Asian mountains, of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa.
The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed: -- but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.
- Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, 70 years ago
UPDATE: Belloc also said in the same book that "...the Mohammedan never becomes a Catholic" [75]. Of course, the Pope could assure him otherwise as of Easter. But JimmyAkin.org also pulls together an important sampler of studies in Why Muslims Become Christian. Food for thought, and prayer.
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