Published by Jack Everest on 19 Jul 2010
The coming crusade: Ralph Peters on African Christians vs. Islamists
Ralph Peters often tackles issues that other commentators avoid. And he often reveals a story that is in direct opposition to what is reported in the media and, in doing so, exposes the truth.
In this case, he tells the truth about Islam in Africa.
In today’s NYPost (The Coming Crusade–Ralph Peters), he shines the light on Islam’s losing battle to dominate the lives of the poor peoples of East Africa. And he speaks of how the gains of Christianity in Africa will eventually (probably sooner rather than later) bring it in into direct conflict with increasingly moribund, but deeply angry, Islam
Here’s are a few excerpts…
A few years back, during one of four major research trips to sub-Saharan Africa, I visited the traditionally Muslim city of Mombassa on the old Swahili (Arab-slaver’s) coast in Kenya. What I found was one of the sharpest religious juxtapositions I’ve seen in global travels.
Thanks to Saudi funding folly, there were far too many mosques for the congregants, so few hit critical mass. Islam in Mombassa felt sleepy, dusty and dull.
Kenya’s Muslims were backward and listless. Condemned to poverty by poor educations (the Saudis pay Muslims to send their children to madrassahs, instead of to state schools), their culture seemed out of steam.
But Christianity blazed. Mega-churches couldn’t contain all those who’d accepted Jesus as their Savior: City parks were packed with ecstatic worshippers every Sunday.
All along east Africa’s Swahili Coast — once a necklace of gems on the body of Islam — the faith of Mohammed seemed like a museum exhibit in a neglected side room. The Christians — from tribes Muslims had enslaved — were the rising power.
As far as converts go, Muslims are being baptized (at great personal risk), but Christians aren’t converting to Islam. Wahhabi Islam’s rejection of joy just doesn’t speak to Africans — who even in misfortune seem incomparably alive.
Yet, however much Christianity is ascendant, Islam isn’t just going to give up without a battle. After all, despite its obfuscations to the contrary, Islam is a religion of war! And as such, its adherents in African regularly butcher Christians for their faith.
But in the end, as Peters points out, African Christians can and will take only so much.
As the death cult of Islam inflicts itself on the religion of joy, it would do well to remember that the excitable religious fervor of Christians, when pushed beyond its breaking point, could quickly become transformed into an overwhelming and devastating army of crusaders.
For fans of Lieutenant Colonel Peters, his latest book is “Endless War.”
