The Road to Acquiescence

The following article was written by Joachim Osther

…there was a much larger but wholly forgotten backstory…the recollection of which can revolutionize the way the West understands its past, and thus its present, with Islam.

– Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar 

After two Swedes were targeted and murdered by a radical Islamist in Brussels last Fall, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said the quiet part aloud – “these terrorists want to frighten us into obedience and silence. That will not happen. This is a time for more security. We can’t be naïve.”

He should have added, “any longer.”

Had European leaders only arrived at this lucid insight prior to 2015 (the year that changed a continent), then it’s likely the two Swedes would be alive today.

Instead, a century steeped in secular atheism has produced in Western consciousness the attempt to distance itself from Christianity (and its Christian roots) and apologize for Western civilization writ large.

Gradually, centuries of Western struggle against Islamic jihad was expunged and re-imagined into an anti-Western narrative that envisions Muslims and Islamic nations as de facto victims of the West; and so, with penitent atheists lining the welcome mats, Europe opened the gates and millions poured in.

“In Sweden, the mood at the time was that this was one of the most welcoming countries anywhere,” said a Swedish reporter describing the 2015 migrant influx, “and a year earlier the prime minister had given a speech asking Swedes to open their hearts to migrants.”

Many of the migrants were escaping the ‘Arab Spring’ which had sparked a resurgence of fundamentalist Islamic groups and leaders throughout Middle Eastern and North African countries. To be sure, many migrants settled in as productive members of society in their new European homelands; and to be sure, there were (and will always be) those that did not.

The Forgotten Backstory

The ‘forgotten backstory’ that is lost on the West is described in detail by Raymond Ibrahim in his book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, as encompassing over a millennia of civilizational clashes between Islam and the West, and characterized by unbending consistency in Islamic rationale.

Ibrahim traces specific mandates calling for Jihad through careful documentation of Koranic directives along with primary source materials containing teachings of Islamic scholars and clerics from across the ages. In doing so, he clearly illustrates how global Islamic hegemony is an overarching mission, with conversion or subjugation of all non-Muslims as a directive, and jihad as the obligatory means.

This missional uniformity, however, has been jettisoned from Western analysis as the new secular epistemology of guilt insists on race, nationality, and economics as the a priori sources of Islamic ire. As such, many Westerners remain myopically naive to what Ibrahim calls “the interconnectivity of Islam” – the fact that 21^st Century jihad is driven by the same objectives as 7^th Century jihad.

What’s more, their erroneous suppositions have sent Europeans and liberal Americans careening down a path solely preoccupied with ‘fixing’ the antipathy through a doctrine of apology made manifest by opening borders and then abdicating ideals, laws, and societal norms in order to accommodate demands made by Islamic fundamentalist migrants.

This, in turn, fans the embers of the fundamentalist segments who perceive such moves as attestation of Islamic superiority and Western weakness, further awakening their overarching hegemonic objective.

An Unfortunate Example

Though Scandinavian countries are growing weary of Islamic violence, recent actions illustrate that the forgotten backstory still remains veiled.

In February, Ibrahim described that the Danes are adopting what “amounts to a ‘blasphemy’ law” that bans the destruction of religious material. The ostensible purpose is “to counter ‘the systematic mockery’ that, among other things, has contributed to intensifying the threat of [Islamic] terrorism in Denmark, the Ministry of Justice said.”

Consistent with anti-Western secular doctrine, the threat of Islamic terrorism is mystifyingly blamed on the Danes themselves while they simultaneously castrate the Western ideal of free speech and unknowingly abdicate further ground to fundamentalist Muslims.

A symbol of hope for the Danes, however, is framed on the office wall of this author – an armband of faded blue felt, with a stripe of red and white cloth running down the middle and a medallion emblazoned with a shield and three heraldic lions in the center.

This was the garment worn clandestinely by members of the Danish Resistance movement during the five years of German occupation from 1940 to 1945. It serves as a reminder of long-standing and intrinsic Danish fortitude and also the bravery of the man who wore it – my grandfather.

There was no stopping the invading Nazi war machine that barreled across the Danish border on April 9^th, 1940. One can only hope that the Danes wake from their secularist stupor and recognize the actual precipitant behind the growing Islamic fundamentalist threat; and in doing so, halt their bewildering excursion down the road to acquiescence.

Joachim Osther is a multi-disciplinarian – a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity. Osther holds a master’s degree in theological studies while working as a strategist, advisor, and published author in the life sciences.