Dear Readers,

“Massacres perpetrated by ISIS in Egypt or Iraq”; “Islamist war expansion in central Africa”; “Terrorist acts in France”. In the past six months, we have seen a crescendo of cruelty and warlike atmosphere in the name of Allah. Close to half a million people have deserted their homes and found refuge in survival camps fleeing Allah’s wrath. Books have been written describing the attacks targeting Christians on a world scale.

These phenomena, which have escalated to an unheard of degree, deserve that we get to the root of the question. Is the jihad, which these warriors invoke, essential to the Muslim religion or is it a ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘extremist’ view? What is the faith professed in the Quran? And what turned Muhammad and Islam into a powerful force?

These and many other issues are pressing hard on the mind of those who wish to get to the core of the Islamic question. Much of the problem is that we grab one Sura or another, and misread it completely because we ignore much of its historical Islamic context. If the Crescent religion is a book religion, it is much more than that. It is a historical empire to contend with, a most hermetic culture, a political force, and a rather shallow religion.

If this is so, we may candidly wonder whether a Westerner and a Christian understand properly Islam. Only those who have long lived in this ‘civilization’ can give us a real appreciation of the Islamic movement. And they soberly estimate that, against the rise of Islam, the decadent Christian nations are no match. Hence, the first duty of fervent Catholics is to know about this rising enemy, which is the purpose of this publication, and oppose to it the charity of truth and the true charity.

Fr. Jürgen Wegner

Publisher