Tom Hoopes has been the executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter for ten years. He is a well known US catholic intellectual. He just wrote a short essay for Crisis magazine in which he enlightened readers on the similarities between Western secularists and Islamists.
“At first glance, the two foes’ attitudes toward sex look utterly different,” Mr. Hoopes wrote. The Western loose attitude toward sexuality is one of the signs of decadence enraging Islamists. “But dig a little deeper and the picture starts to change”. Both are obsessed with sexuality.
A new video has just emerged from Syria: it shows three Islamic State terrorists laughing while a Yazidi girl is screaming in pain in the background. Because of Western sexual obsession, we in the West have become deaf to the screams of ISIS’ sex slaves.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does an ideological battle.
I would like to add a point of difference to Mr. Hoopes’ comparison: nobody wants to fight and die for the flag of hedonism and the hedonists themselves, if threatened with death, will surrender. This is why Europe will submit to radical Islam.
Western civilization developed from its Judeo Christian roots over many centuries. The core value has been the centrality of family and the intimate connection with future generations.
Today's Western individualistic society, cut off from its roots, has put an unbalanced emphasis on material pleasure and sexual satisfaction, ignoring the long term consequences.
We in the West have deprived many generations of the reasons to build a family. Population has declined dramatically in war ridden countries like Syria. But a population drop over decades has never been observed since the 1950s with the exception of Southern and Eastern Europe.
In Eastern Europe, the number of women of childbearing age will drop by three-quarters by the end of the XXI century. To quote the Financial Times, “Eastern Europe’s population is shrinking like no other regional population in modern history”. Similarly, fewer babies were born in Italy in 2015 than in any year since the state was founded 154 years ago. Germany, likewise, is experiencing a demographic collapse. Europe’s most wealthy nation will lose the equivalent of the former East Germany.
Spain has witnessed the most extreme demographic spiral observed anywhere. It is the mystery of a country that, until the seventies, had the highest fertility rate in Europe (3) and that today has the lowest in the world (1,3). Abortion is now the leading cause of death among Spaniards. In 1998, abortions were 54,000, ten years later these rose to 118,000. An increase of 100 percent. One pregnancy in five today in Spain ends in an abortion, one every 4.8 minutes, 12 per hour, 298 every day.
A society that does not reproduce its own kind is heading for liquidation, literally and in terms of loss of its identity. Nature abhors a vacuum and so does an ideological battle.
Now Europe needs to import young people in large numbers from Middle East to compensate for its relativistic lifestyle choices. In January the liberal weekly Die Zeit, announced, “Germany becomes young again,” noting that 80% of the migrants were under the age of 35. France is already 10% Muslim and it is stuck with a demographic transformation that has already passed the point of no return.
Europe lost the will to value life and it is now killing itself, through a greedy craving for ever more sexual comfort.
Historically, all great civilizations fell for the same reasons: affluence takes over and steals the society's ability to see beyond its own selfish pleasures. This is what happened to ancient Rome and Athens.
If you want to see the churches and the cathedrals, the religious art and the castles of Europe, you better go see them now as they will be displaced by Islam.
Sic transit gloria. Thus passes the glory.