Echoes from Lepanto

By: Gerardo Enrique Garibay Camarena

22/09/06

On September 12, His Holiness, Benedict XVI, quoted, in the middle of a speech at the Regensburg University, a medieval text where Mohammed is accused of bringing only evil and inhumane things to the world. Pope’s intention never was to insult muslims, but give to his listeners an historical reference about the relationship between faith and reason. Even, so no one could have doubts about it, Benedict himself has explained his speech’s content and emphasized that what a Byzantine emperor said in the fourteenth century doesn’t reflect his personal point of view.

Despite all those explanations a lot of islamic groups had reacted with violence: On the days following Pope’s conference muslims burned Christian churches and images of the Pope, killed an Italian nun, even threatened with attacks on the Vatican (specifically a group linked with al Quaeda). Besides, hundreds of Islam’s religious leaders threw themselves against His Holiness, asking for his deposition .

Anyone who has read Pope’s conference has been surprised by the aggressive overreaction of the muslim world, and that’s because the problem is not if Benedict say or didn’t say something in particular during his Regensburg's conference, but the underlying conflict between Islam and the Western civilization. Why? Because Islam isn't only a religion, is a whole way of life, that controls even the tiniest aspects of human life; because a good muslim will work until every person on the planet declare that there’s no more God than Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet; because many of the Islam’s teachings (those related to women, for example) are intrinsically evil.

From the moment Islam was born muslims have tried to impose their religion and way of life by violent methods, -sometimes killing entire nations-. They established at “swordpoint” in north Africa, the middle east and parts of Asia; muslim expansion even threatened the very survival of European civilization. In 1571 the ottoman army had invaded Cyprus and was attacking Mediterranean ports. In response to this serious menace, Spain, Venice and the Holy See put together an army called “The Holy League”, who faced and defeated the ottoman armada in the battle of Lepanto. European’s victory meant the end of islamic expansionist ambitions in Europe and ensured the continuance of Christian civilization.

Now, 400 years later, the moment of a new confrontation has come. In recent times muslims -literally- invaded through migration countries like Italy, France or Germany, At the same time, terrorist-fundamentalist groups are getting the political power in more muslims nations, and worldwide, islamic organizations support terrorism while they try to block everyone else’s free speech right.

The question we have to ask is whether western civilization will or wont have the enough strength to stand against Mohammed sons, not only in the military field, but in the identity and the moral ones, because it’ll be mostly on those two last batterfields where the new battle is going to be fought. To win, we, who consider us as members of the western civilization, have to get away from that hypocrite liberal tolerance and regain our certainty of truth, we need to stop destroying the bases of our own culture and rediscover the faith in our beliefs.

Even with all the flaws that might have, our western Jew-Christian civilization is the best model and is worth defending it. We can already hear the echoes from Lepanto, the signs are clear, the time for a new struggle to defend freedom and the survival of our way of life approaches, we better be ready… or start to take Arabic language courses.

garibaycamarena@hotmail.com