Islam's Fifth Column: Western liberals

by Christopher A. Ferrara
March 31, 2017

By the term "fifth column" is meant "any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or nation." That describes perfectly the role of Western liberalism — including, one must say, the current Vatican apparatus — in its endless apologia for Islamism. Contrary to all the principles it professes, the liberal-mediatic complex not only refuses to see or hear any evil where Islam is concerned, but further demands nothing less than the Islamicization of the entire Western world through mass Muslim migration.

Yet inherent to Islam is a twisted, positively barbaric ethical code that treats women like chattel; legalizes domestic violence and even rape; mandates genital mutilation; sanctions "honor killings" to avenge male pride, the death penalty for apostasy and the summary execution of homosexuals by throwing them from the tops of buildings; and in general seeks to impose the regime of Sharia law under which all manner of male perversity is legally protected and women have the status of second-class citizens. And this evil regime is no mere artifact of "radical Islam" but rather is basic to the juridical makeup of Islamic nations, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. 

Islam, in short, represents every horror the Western liberal feverishly imagines to exist in "male-dominated" Western societies. Yet the liberal mind refuses to admit any criticism of the religion founded by perhaps the greatest "male chauvinist pig" in world history: Mohammed.

Why? John Zmirak has written an important article on this seeming paradox, reflecting the conclusion I myself have expressed in various forums. That conclusion is obvious enough: liberals defend Islam because Islam is the historic enemy of Christianity, which liberals despise more than anything on the face of this earth. With the connivance of its liberal fifth column, Islam is now in the process of achieving the eradication of Western Christianity it was prevented from achieving by the constant and often miraculous opposition of the Catholic Church — from the centuries-long reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula beginning in 718, to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, to the Battle of Vienna in 1683. 

All of this, Zmirak writes, is explained by "an old and miserable saying: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend'." That is, liberal affinity for Islam serves the liberal jihad against what –

"leftists, feminists, and 'Mainline' Christians who back them have identified [as] the enemy. It is orthodox Christianity and the society which it built up in the West. That includes bourgeois society, private property, the traditional family, and the market economy. And there is literally nothing on earth that today's left hates more than traditional Western society. When modern progressives watch Father Knows Best they get the same chills as we do from Schindler's List."

Nothing else but "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" could explain why Western liberalism operates as the Islamic fifth column. As Zmirak puts it: "If your main goal in life is tearing down the traditional West, to repay it for past grievances, then Islam can be your best ally. It's the Red Army that can march into Nazi Berlin — which is on some level how you imagine America. So keep on importing millions of angry young Muslims into Western countries. Keep demonizing those who criticize Islam."

Incredibly enough, today we witness the spectacle of no less than a Pope who incessantly agitates precisely for the mass importation "of angry young Muslims into Western countries" while demonizing those who would strictly limit their immigration. This is a mystery of iniquity to take its place alongside all the others that are contributing to the current unparalleled ecclesial crisis.

Writing in 1951, a mere twelve years before the Second Vatican Council abruptly abandoned the Church's age-old opposition to the errors of Mohammed, Pope Pius XII issued this warning:

"Venerable Brethren, you are well aware that almost the whole human race is today allowing itself to be driven into two opposing camps, for Christ or against Christ. The human race is involved today in a supreme crisis, which will issue in its salvation by Christ, or in its dire destruction."

It is precisely this crisis of which the Mother of God Herself warned when She came to Fatima — the place named after a Muslim convert to the faith — almost exactly a century ago.