WHY ISLAM WILL LIKELY WIN THE FOREVER WAR AGAINST THE WEST

April 11, 2024 by Doug Casey

Let’s examine Islam and its impact on the West.

Here’s the bottom line: the conflict between Islam and the West amounts to a Forever War, a concept from Joe Haldeman’s sci-fi novel of the same name. And the Mohammedan’s are likely to win its next stage.

The Forever War got underway in the early 7th century and has ebbed and flowed since then. It’s now heating up again, as evidenced by the fact that most recent wars and terrorist activities center around places like Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Bosnia, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and organizations with names like Hamas, Black September, and Al-Qaeda.Why is that? Muslims see their lands and culture as having been under constant attack since the Crusades. The romantic image of knights in armor battling to free the Holy Land from the infidel is reversed in their eyes. They see hordes of European barbarians having invaded their homeland on a pretext, intent on rape, murder, and wholesale looting.

Over the last two centuries, European and now American armies have run roughshod over every Muslim country. The Musselmen don’t like it any more than Americans would if the Houthis were bombing New York and had a “no-fly” zone set up over Alabama to protect a black separatist movement.

Their personal foibles aside, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Khadafi are viewed as heroes by most Muslims for having fought against the Crusaders despite enormous odds.

Islam is probably the world’s largest religion, with 2 billion adherents, certainly, if you consider the number of real, as opposed to just nominal believers. It’s also the world’s fastest-growing. It completely dominates a huge part of the world with lots of poor people, little capital, little freedom, and uniformly repressive governments. To what degree is that the fault of Islam? I’d say to a large degree. But if that’s the case, how can the Mohammedans possibly win the Forever War? I’m going to show why they likely will.

We are told the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him, a phrase the faithful usually appended to mentions of his name, abbreviated to p.b.u.h.) was a merchant until, at age 40, he was visited by the angel Gabriel and became a warlord. Gabriel recited the words of Allah (The Compassionate, The Merciful—perhaps the most common of the many descriptions used by the faithful). Muhammed transcribed those wishes as the Koran. To most scholars, however, it seems more like some vaguely remembered stories he heard from travelers.

Islam attracts people for very understandable reasons: It offers a neat package explaining the meaning of life while promising eternal bliss after death. It has some characteristics and makes promises, rendering it especially attractive to the poor and downtrodden, not least of which is a daily meal if you attend mosque and pray after performing your ablutions. And that means its potential market is about 75% of the world’s people.

The Essence of Islam

Islam has a number of sects, but only a tiny fraction as many as Christianity. It won’t serve a useful purpose to go into them except to observe that the reason for the relatively small number of variations (basically Sunni and Shia) is that it’s a much more cohesive faith than Christianity, being based on one rather short book, promulgated by one man, whose status is clear; the religion leaves relatively little open to interpretation. The basic pillars of Islam tend to unify believers, whatever other differences they may have; internecine warfare between Muslims over religion has been the exception.

It’s unclear what constitutes an observant, or perhaps a “saved,” Christian; opinions differ widely among that religion’s many sects. There’s no question, however, about who is an observant Muslim: One must only adhere to its Five Pillars.

1) The Shahadah, or Profession of Faith. This is the essence of Islam. In order to become a Muslim, one must say aloud, sincerely, and purposefully, “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

2) Prayer. One must pray, in a ritualized manner, five times a day, in congregation if possible. Muezzins call the faithful to prayer from the minarets of mosques through loudspeakers. Non-Muslims may find that challenging, which is intentional.

3) Zakat, or tithing. One must give a certain percentage of one’s assets to the poor each year.

4) Fasting. One cannot eat, drink, or smoke from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, the ninth month of the lunar calendar. This year, Ramadan began on Mar 11.

5) Hadj, or pilgrimage. One must journey to Mecca at least once if it’s possible to do so.

There you have it. And it certainly seems like a small price to pay to gain Paradise, where one engages in pleasures of the flesh for eternity, surrounded by 72 doe-eyed houris. Infidels and apostates, meanwhile, may expect to burn in sulfur for eternity. As the Holy Koran says in 5:33—and many other suras—”Those who make war with God and his messenger will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. That is how they will be treated in this world, and in the next, they will have an awful doom.”

Islam offers benefits in the here and now, as well. It cultivates a brotherhood of believers cutting across racial, ethnic, and linguistic barriers not just in theory but in practice. It allows the believer to communicate directly with Allah, dispensing with an intermediary priesthood. Mullahs and imams are scholars or leaders; the position is open to anyone. It’s a very fraternal and democratic religion.

But it’s not a religion of peace, at least not until the world is Muslim. Muslims believe the world is divided into Darul Islam, the “House of Submission”—where infidels have been conquered or eliminated—and Darul Harb, the “House of War”—where war will establish Islam.

The word Islam means “submission.” Since Allah is all-powerful and all-knowing, it means that whatever happens is the will of Allah, and the faithful do well to accept it. This leads, on the one hand, to a mellow, destressifying view of life, which is a good thing. On the other hand, it can lead to a very fatalistic view of life, wherein hard work and striving can be pointless. This is one reason for the relative backwardness of the Muslim world. And the fact that many or most men are unemployed, especially those in Western countries.

It’s become the practice only in recent years to call the religion Islam. Mohammedanism used to be more common, and was accepted, the way followers of Christ are called Christians, and followers of Buddha are Buddhists. But it’s now PC to say Islam. Causing the West to replace its traditional word with one they prefer is itself a form of submission.

If you want to convince others of something, the most important thing to remember is: “Keep it simple!” And Islam does that extremely well. The key to salvation is the observance of the Five Pillars.

Islam also cultivates certainty, which mightily abets its simplicity. If you want the masses to believe something, certainty—total, unwavering confidence in the correctness of your position—is many times more effective than any amount of intellectualism. Simplicity and certainty are the two indispensable elements of a successful mass religion. With this solid foundation laid by Allah, through the Prophet, enthusiastic early adherents were able to take the show on the road.

The Reason for Islam’s Early Success

The question often arises how Islamic civilization, which conquered much of the known world in the 150 years after the Hegira (Muhammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD) and then entered a Golden Age until the 13thC, could have fallen. Was it because Allah smiled on Muslims in their early years but, for some reason, has frowned upon them in more recent centuries? Or could there be some other force at work?

Two factors were important to Islam’s early conquests.

First, the Byzantines (and the Persians, their historic enemy) suffered hugely from Justinian’s Plague from 541-549, which probably killed 20% of the population, especially in cities. Meanwhile, the two empires fought constant and mutually devastating wars, further demoralizing and impoverishing them.

Second, the Muslims developed an excellent military organization enabled by religious fervor. Great conquests usually begin with a unifying ideology, most often some form of nationalism or religion, and the simpler and more certain, the better. That’s exactly what Islam gave the Arabs; they had Allah on their side. The conquests led to wealth, and wealth to civilization and progress.

The West counterattacked with the Reconquista of Spain and the Crusades starting in 1099. The Muslims then took Constantinople in 1453 and moved on to almost conquer Europe before being turned back at Vienna in 1683. From there, because of the unique merits of Western Civilization, Europe developed many times faster technologically, conquering and colonizing every single Muslim country. But since the end of WW2, all these ex-colonies have become independent, and Muslims have been counterattacking, using a new military approach popularly called “terrorism.”

War, Wealth, and Hypocrisy

It’s worthwhile examining the relationship between war and wealth. After all, most wars have economic roots. At least until very recent times, conquest was the key to wealth and success. Losing a war meant poverty (simply because the enemy stole everything you owned) and probably slavery.

The wealth Islam gained early on led to its Golden Age, a flowering of medicine, math, philosophy, and science. Unknown to most, the Mohammedans weren’t then, and aren’t now, aggressive believers in “Convert or Die!”. For one thing, forcible conversion is Haram—forbidden in the Koran. For another, it means the Ummah (the collective of believers) get less tax. Dhimmis (conquered people who aren’t Muslims) have to pay much more tax. The Golden Age was the result of well-managed conquest. Conquered dhimmis meant wealth and leisure.

Conquest is what you call simple theft when it’s perpetrated by a large, well-organized group. The Arabs became wealthy just like every other successful empire. In pre-technological times, conquest was a formula for success. Nobody had qualms about it. The thought of war crimes tribunals, had it even existed, would have been laughable in times when the standard recompense for a conquering army’s soldiers was three days of unrestricted looting, raping and general mayhem in a fallen city.

Historically, when you conquer an enemy and confiscate (another nice word for “steal”) his possessions, you became wealthier. This was, however, much more true in pre-industrial times, when wealth was static (land, gold, livestock, etc.). In today’s hi-tech economy, simple theft is much less productive.

Today, you can’t effectively steal know-how. That’s because it’s a process, not a concrete object. The higher the technological level of a society, the less sense theft makes. The whole story of civilization is one of replacing theft by production. In a high-tech world, theft is actually counterproductive, much as you gain no knowledge by stealing the answers to a test. That’s not the way it was in the ancient world, however, when Allah dictated the immutable Koran.

Conquest allowed the Muslims, tent dwellers riding out of the desert, to become wealthy and stay wealthy for a while. But—notwithstanding the Golden Age, when there were lots of dhimmis to provide them leisure—Muslims are suspicious of secular knowledge. Since the Koran is the exact and indisputable word of Allah, it’s almost blasphemy to read anything else, learn about anything else, or do anything that doesn’t relate directly to what Allah wants you to do. A good Muslim makes his religion not just the centerpiece of his life; he makes it his life. This is why many Muslims know little other than what they learn in Madrassa or lectures from their mullah.

I’ve read the Koran. About a quarter of it is effusive praise for Allah. A quarter is imprecations of unbelievers, apostates, and descriptions of what fate awaits them. A quarter gives Muslims advice and promises of good things to come. And about a quarter consists of modified stories from the Bible. Perhaps I read a poor translation, but the book lacks the poetic elegance of many parts of the Bible. HL Mencken said it sounded like a dog down on all fours barking. If he was alive today, he’d undoubtedly have a fatwah issued against him, and his life would be in danger.

That’s not to say Islam doesn’t share many Western moral values. It’s absolutely against theft, lying, or hypocrisy—but it depends on who is involved. Allah is against theft, lying, or hypocrisy when dealing with other members of the Ummah. But everything is acceptable when dealing with Kaffirs (unbelievers) and the Darul Harb. This is one aspect where Islam is seriously different from Christianity and almost any other religion.

That’s one reason Islam has such staying power, unchanged in its basic form. But as more and more of the conquered world converted to Islam over the centuries, there were more privileged Believers and fewer dhimmis to support them. That’s a practical reason—on top of the religious mandate—why Islam wants to take over the West. It’s where all the wealth is, and there are lots of dhimmis to tax, as it was in the long-gone Golden Age.

Fundamentalism

What should really concern people in the West, however, aren’t the economic but the political ramifications of Mohammed’s religion. While many other religions, from Voodoo to Hinduism, may be viewed as quaint or bizarre, Islam is a threat. That’s because of what is considered the 6th Pillar, known as Jihad, or Holy War, to defend and spread Islam.

If you research Islam on the Internet, you’ll find that its violent or non-PC aspects are severely downplayed. No one who remembers Salman Rushdie wants to offend Islam in any way, even accidentally. Intimidation and deception are intrinsic parts of warfare, and they are praised in the Hadith—which recounts the actions and words of Mohammed and his close associates. Perhaps that’s why Islam—notwithstanding the numerous acts of violence by Muslims—tries to present a friendly and reasonable face to the kaffirs and Darul Harb.

But it’s not a religion of peace. Here are a few quotes from the Koran to give you a flavor:

2:191–“Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.”

3:28–“Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.”

3:85–“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.”

8:12–“Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Koran.”

8:60–“Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.”

8:65– “The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.”

9:5–“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them.”

9:30–“The Jews and Christians are perverts, fight them.”

9:123– “Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.”

47:4–“Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.”

Jihad, understandably, scares Kaffirs. The way hearing a congregation sing “Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war” on a Sunday might scare Muslims. Meanwhile, the US Air Force is plastering various Muslim countries. That angers Muslims and they look to the Koran and Hadith for counsel. This reinforces fundamentalism.

Some say that Islam is basically fine, a religion of peace, as their propagandists claim. They say the problem is fundamentalism, which is very much on the rise.

Fundamentalism amounts to living your life exactly according to The Book, at least as you understand it. And this gets us back to the problem of hypocrisy. For instance, since Allah, via the Prophet, says it is wrong to charge interest under any circumstances, how can you rationalize that with modern banking practices and economic theory, in which interest is the time value of money? If Jesus, who many Christians believe is God, says that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven, how can you rationalize being rich?

Well, Muslim banks have at least 18 ways of getting a return on loans without calling it interest (fees, return gifts, commissions, tokens of appreciation, percentage of profit, etc.). As for how Christians solve the wealth conundrum, I’m sure we’ve all heard the answers in Sunday school. Query: Is this why Jews are famously richer than either Christians or Muslims?

Actually, despite all the problems fundamentalists of all religions cause, you’ve got to respect them, if only because they’re not hypocrites. They don’t just talk the talk; they walk the walk. But fundamentalism is only a short step from fanaticism.

The Future of Islam

Having looked briefly at Islam’s history, let’s explore where it’s going. Should Islam be considered a threat to “Civilization As We Know It,” i.e., Western Civ? That question has at least two answers.

One answer is yes; since the two civilizations have antithetical values, Islam is a threat. A good Muslim knows he has to spread Darul Islam and conquer Darul Harb. There are now 49 Muslim countries and some of them have serious militaries. Numerous Islamic groups will not only defend themselves from the medieval Crusaders reinvented as modern Americans, like the primitive Houthis on the Red Sea. Many want to take the show on the road and conquer potential dhimmis in Europe from the inside.

The Ummah will fight not so much with planes and tanks, but with weapons they can afford, which are ironically not just vastly cheaper but vastly more cost-effective. Among other things, they’ll use demographics and waves of migrants. Their large families are paid for by host countries. We won’t call their warriors “soldiers” or “terrorists” but “neighbors.”

One of Islam’s greatest strengths is also one of its greatest weaknesses: namely, the fact it’s more than a religion; it’s a complete worldview. It doesn’t just prescribe how one deals with the supernatural, or even just morality, but dictates one’s approach to finance, science, art, politics and life in general. This has a certain utility in uniting primitive people for the purpose of military conquest using simple technology. If you can convince a horde they’re going to Paradise if they die on a Jihad against the enemy, you’ve got a formidable low-tech military force. But groupthink and other ingrained Islamic habits are very unhelpful in any other area of civilization. On the other hand, who needs an expensive missile when Muslim teenagers, available in unlimited quantities, can deliver suicide bombs accurately?

Some, especially those in National Security circles, discreetly ask what should be done about the Muslim threat. My answer is: This is not a military problem and can’t be solved with military solutions. It was one thing when Islam was confronted by an equal ideological foe in the form of Medieval Christianity—or even the Christianity of 100 years ago. But, unfortunately for the West, its ideological counterforce is now essentially Wokeism.

Wokeism can be loosely defined by degraded concepts like intersectionality, LGBTQ, DEI, safe spaces, widespread triggering, shameless pandering to minorities, identity politics, guilt about the values of the West, and a desire to abolish traditional norms and culture. And something called Islamophobia—it’s as if the West is supposed to welcome Islam. When, in fact, Islam is as pernicious as Nazism or Communism.

The Ummah of Muslims suffers from none of this. In fact, it is exactly the opposite, to an extreme. Random examples are the persecution of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, and dozens of murders and rapes with ideological motives. All over Europe, once they reach a critical mass, they act as if they’re already the rulers. There’s no resistance from weak and demoralized Europeans.

The Muslims I know are, individually, as decent as anyone else. The conflict arises when there’s a critical mass, and they start thinking of themselves as part of the Ummah conquering Darul Harb.

On the other hand, in the long run, Islam is not a threat at all. Because Muslims take their religion so seriously, they will necessarily fall behind in every other area of human endeavor. Slavish belief in a book that came to an illiterate Arab warlord in his dreams in the early 7th century is unlikely to lead to success in a wealthy, high-tech world. There are Muslim technicians who can learn by rote. But very few Muslim scientists because science requires independent thought. Almost all Muslim scientists, not coincidentally, live in the West. Islam can’t keep up except through force.

The economic future of countries with Islamic traditions will not be what it could be. The only Islamic countries that are doing well are those sitting on pools of oil. Their tall buildings and impressive airports were all designed in the West and built by imported labor. Islam’s wealth is only there because of an accident of geography. Its masses are only sustained by the agricultural and medical technologies the West has given them.

A continuation of the Forever War between Islam and the West seems likely. The major theatre will be Europe, which has pretty much always been the case for the last 2,000 years. The Europeans will lose because of their lack of will and overwhelming demographics.

The followers of Jesus and Mohammed share two features: each claims to be the only true faith as defined in a holy book (the New Testament and the Koran, respectively), and each proselytizes (although the Christians have been much more aggressive regarding conversion—and that was in the past). Islam is much more about domination and conquest.

The fact is that every country conquered by Islam (with the exception of Spain) has stayed Islamic. Christians are much less strident now than in medieval, Reformation, and colonial times. In fact, large segments of Christendom are that in name only. Santa Claus and empty churches are mainly benign reminders, whereas the mosques being built throughout Europe are full. In Europe, Christianity is weak, even dying. That’s true to a lesser extent in the US. As Napoleon observed, in warfare, the psychological is to the physical as three is to one.

Islam is more than a religion to its 2 billion believers; it’s a worldview. It necessarily intrudes into all aspects of life—business, family, law, government—you name it. The Koran is largely written in the first person as the direct and incontrovertible word of Allah Himself. As the newest Abrahamic religion, Islam is at the same stage of development as Christianity was at the same age. It has a medieval outlook. Will it mellow? I doubt it. It would no longer be Islam if the Koran and Hadith are not strictly observed.

Although most eyes are now on the conflict between Russia and NATO in the Ukraine or the US and China, the Forever War with Islam shouldn’t be overlooked. It will be there long after the others are resolved. Islam has never lost any ground over 1400 years. It was quiescent up to 1946 but has been on the march since. At least in Europe, the prospect of a war of survival exists for several reasons.

Muslims have never integrated into other cultures. I’m not just talking about the recent migrations into Europe, where they universally live in self-designated areas that are “no-go” zones for Europeans.

The war in the former Yugoslavia was most virulent with the Muslim Bosnians. The breakaway state of Kosovo is a clash between Muslim Kosovars and Orthodox Serbs. These people had lived next to each other for hundreds of years. India may be the largest scale example. Pakistan forcibly separated from India in 1947, accompanied by perhaps 2,000,000 killings, and is 98% Muslim today. About 200 million Muslims remain in India but still have serious conflict with Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Farcis, Jews, and Jains, who live peaceably with each other.

The high and continuing immigration from Africa and Asia, compounded by a very high Muslim birthrate and a lower-than-replacement native birthrate, augurs poorly for the West. Estimates vary, but the Pew Research project, done in 2013, projected that by 2050, Muslims would make up over 30% of Sweden, 20% of Germany and Austria, and 15-18% of most other Western European countries.

Many factors could alter these demographics, but Mohammedans are already close to a majority in many major cities, including London and Paris. And major cities are where policy is made. Immigration is rising rapidly, not least because the EU essentially legislates the welcoming of “refugees.” They’re to be given free room, board, income, and a cell phone upon arrival, and in most cases, a hearing on their status doesn’t take place for many months. The only thing most Muslim countries produce is more Muslims. So-called refugees will play a significant part in winning the war against Darul Harb and the kaffirs in Europe.

In addition, there’s a growing trend for conversion in the West, evidenced by Andrew Tate—not someone I follow but he ranked #1 in Internet hits in 2022. It’s a trend among many black athletes, in particular Mike Tyson.

The Forever War won’t be fought with conventional armies, not just because the Islamic world doesn’t have the technology. But because Western militaries are useless against an amorphous mass of millions of people. The Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen, are proving that cheap missiles and drones launched against Western shipping and naval assets do a lot of damage. Launching multi-million dollar weapons against mud huts only makes more enemies.

So, what will the conflict be like? Amorphous and disjointed, chaotic and without fixed fronts. With many millions of Muslims in Europe—Pakistanis in the UK, Turks in Germany, North Africans in France, and Holland—Europe’s conquest of the world has come back to bite it. They’ll approach majority status over the next 20 years. They’re not being absorbed, and they (understandably) treat Europeans with contempt. Many millions more will arrive as boat people, whether Europeans like it or not, pretty much as Jacques Raspail projected in his novel Camp of the Saints 50 years ago.In the past, the West asked the question: What’s our oil doing under their sand? In the future, the Muslims will ask: How can we rid ourselves of these aggressive infidels once and for all? Then the West will rephrase their question to: These people want to kill us! How can we stop them once and for all?

Many think that the US can’t lose a war because of its extremely high-tech military. Expensive toys can be useful from time to time; they can win some battles. But they’re basically useless for winning the next generation of warfare, like cavalry in WW1 or battleships in WW2. There may be a few aircraft carriers and F-35s around in 20 years. But they’ll be oddities reserved for special purposes, like typewriters.

In addition to winning the critically important demographic and ideological wars, the Muslims, backward as they are, may yet win the tech war over the short run. That’s because everyone can have weapons the West invented—nuclear, biological, and cyber weapons.

Should we worry about the current stage of the Forever War favoring Islam? It depends on your timeframe, I suppose. The short-run—the next 50-100 years—looks very turbulent and grim. Beyond that, only two things are predictable.

One, many people will continue to produce more than they consume and save the difference; this will create capital, which is critical for not only a higher standard of living but for the advancement of technology. That augurs well for the West. Muslims aren’t good at those things.

Two, since there are more scientists and engineers alive than have lived in all previous history combined, technology will keep advancing. Technology is the major force to advance the general standard of living. That also favors the West.

So, I’m essentially an optimist. Let’s just hope the savers aren’t wiped out and the scientists don’t do too much government work.

Mankind has risen from subsistence and living in caves as little as 10,000 years ago to reaching for the stars today – and the rate of progress has been accelerating. Why should one more culture war, including the Forever War, with the likely victory of the Mohammedans, bring that to an end? Unless we sink into a Dark Age.

One thing is for sure. Until and unless there’s a renaissance, the things we value about our civilization are in the process of being washed away.