In this cautiously bold title, Doug Casey makes the case that the near future will fall under the scimitar of Mohammed. Apart from the provocative thesis, what immediately appealed to me about this piece is that it is not weighed down with endnotes. Instead, Casey, obviously a well-read man, relies upon common historical knowledge and abduction (in the Peircean sense). This is an approach that I need to attempt more frequently as I get bogged down before I even start writing with fears that I do not have sufficient information on anything to speak perceptively. With that in mind….

According to the Pew Research Center, Christianity still outranks Islam by close to 500,000,000 adherents. By 2050, that gap is projected to be fewer than 200,000,000. While the demographic scales may continue to tip in favor of Christianity for the decades to come, the militant nature of Islam reckons even this slight imbalance a loss.

What allows this religion to stride so powerfully? To begin, Casey contends that Islam’s demands are much more straightforward than Christianity’s: “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.” While Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the Reformed denominations of Christianity require credal (namely, Nicaean) affirmation, each one has a different catechesis for “full” communion with the church. Once one has entered into full communion, what one has to do can be baffling. For example, Catholicism has it six precepts (attend Mass on required days, confess at least once a year during the Easter season, receive Communion at least once a year during the Easter season, observe required fasts, observe marriage laws, and contribute to the Church). However, once one gets past the legal sanctions, one can still be clueless as to how to live out the two commandments of love, the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments (apart from the obvious), the Eight Beatitudes, the corporal works of mercy, the spiritual works of mercy, the three theological virtues, the four cardinal virtues, etc. One could also spend the rest of one’s days miserably navel-gazing, err–examining one’s conscience, to see if one is displaying the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit in quantity and quality. Even then, for all that, according to Catholic theology, one cannot confidently speak of being saved. The notion of being “saved” reveals a theological perspective that all strains of Christianity do not share, namely Catholicism and Orthodoxy. As any saint of old would remind us, it takes only one unconfessed mortal sin to divorce us from God for eternity. While I do not want to simplify Islam’s requirements, especially as I have not studied Islam in depth, the Five Pillars possess a soteriological austerity that historic Christianity does not. (I refuse to take the Evangelical fire-insurance “Sinner’s Prayer” understanding of conversion with its attendant once-saved-always-saved mantra seriously.)

I saw a clip on X recently of a Muslim man in England approaching a young man to ask him why he was not a Muslim. He then encouraged the young man to attend a local mosque. All this young man would then need to do is recite the Shahadah, and he is then immediately incorporated into a religious family. If I tried the Catholic version of this, I would then have to inform my potential convert that if he happens to like what he sees (big IF there), he will then have to subject himself to eight to nine months of religious instruction that will vary highly depending upon who is running the RCIA program. If a sponsor is not provided, he would have to find one, which might very well lead to his asking me; then, I am committed for that period to sit through weekly catechesis. Call me uncharitable, but that is nothing I want to do for someone who is not already near and dear to me. Hence, not only will an easier conversion process attract more converts; it will also result in more “everyday” adherents wanting to do their part to proselytize.

Another magnetic feature of Islam, according to Casey, is its radically leveling, Protestant-like nature: “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.” While Christianity teaches, indeed, the last shall be first and the first shall be last, institutional Christianity is nothing if not hierarchical: apostolic succession, keys of the kingdom, sacerdotal powers, teaching authority, loosening and binding, etc. Much can be said, perhaps, about Catholic converts who bring with them their antidisestablishmentarianism.

However, as Casey notes, Islam “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.” Without delving into internecine quibbles whether we should credit Protestantism or Catholicism, we can agree that Christianity was the galvanizing force behind the West’s cultural, scientific, and political achievements. Regardless of a denomination’s understanding of predestination, both innovation and discovery have flown from Christianity’s promotion of personal agency. Until the tremors of the competency crises open a major cataclysmic fault, society can continue to use and build upon existent structures and technology provided by a formerly Christian West. Once disintegration becomes more widespread, it remains to be seen what Western nihilism and Eastern fatalism can produce.

Thinking about this, I can attribute the growth of Christianity to nothing short of the work of God. How else could such a theologically and legally dense religion spread like ideological wildfire across cultures and continents, especially if one considers that, during its early years, growth came primarily among the poor and uneducated? Sure, Buddhism and Hinduism are abstruse, but they have also experienced a much more limited cross-cultural appeal. Sociologically speaking, I would not have bet on Christianity spreading as widely as it did; it should have died as did the mystery religions.

Martin Luther called the Turks, as a metonym for Islam, the scourge of God. He believed that their being allowed to invade Christian lands was divine punishment for the sinful lifestyles of Christians. Today we have the slightly less hyperbolic Andrew Tate arguing the Islam is the only real choice for masculine men in light of feminized, degenerate Christianity. Given what mainstream Christianity has become, who can blame him? However, using Paris as metonym for Christianity, to slightly alter what Nora Bayes sang back in 1919, “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the desert /After they’ve seen Paree’?”