“We are divided in the face of a Mohammedan world, divided in every way—divided by separate independent national rivalries, by the warring interests of possessors and
dispossessed—and that division cannot be remedied because the cement which once held our civilization together, the Christian cement, has crumbled.”
—Hilaire Belloc
Neither Christians nor Jews can claim that their religion has always been innocuous. What Srdja Trifkovic argues in The Sword of the Prophet, however, is that the raw stuff from which Islam is made is particularly dangerous and unpromising, that the bellicose tradition is worse than admitted by the influential Islamic Studies lobby, that the present threat from Islam is alarming, and that the future demands the vigilance of non-Muslims. In doing so, he challenges the opinion that all religions are somehow equally valid (or invalid). All theocracy, equipped with a scriptural license for violence, is dangerous, and Islam is—and has been, almost continuously—more theocratic than rival religions. The men and women born into this religion may deserve our sympathy, but they are not aided by a blanket respect for Islam. The assumption that there is no such thing as false religion is not a concession that Muslims would make.
Trifkovic will be...