Interview with Luiz Solimeo, Author of New Book
In the name of the right to immigration, the West has been invaded by hordes of Mohammedans whose belief — Islam — is seen by some as a “religion of peace.” However, as this interview clearly shows, a “jihad” (Muslim holy war) has been declared against the Western Christian world with such a boundless hatred for the Catholic religion as “tolerant” Koran prescribes: “Kill the idolaters, the polytheists.”
Since Islam is in the news, we interview TFP author, Luiz Sérgio Solimeo, who has just published a timely book on Islam dealing with its current expansion in the West, its doctrines and origins.
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The work is titled Islam and the Suicide of the West: The Origin, Doctrine, and Goals of Islam. It is published by the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). The preface was written by Admiral James A. Lyons, a former commander of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet.
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Crusade Magazine: The title of your work is very suggestive. Could you explain it to our readers?
Mr. Luiz Solimeo: Gladly. How is the West committing suicide? Today we are witnessing a real invasion of Europe and the West by masses of Muslim immigrants and “refugees.” According to statistics, most of these are young men of military age. This constant migratory flow together with the brutal decline in the birth rate in European countries makes the future of Christianity in Europe very gloomy. It is estimated that around 2030 (within only 12 years!) Muslims will make up almost 10% of the population of Western Europe. This fact should alarm governments, religious authorities and responsible sectors of society. Unfortunately, there is a great lack of reaction to this threat.
Crusade: How do you explain this lack of reaction?
Mr. Solimeo: It is partially because Western nations suffer from moral decadence, a loss of identity and failure to uphold principles. They also lack knowledge about Islam and its expansionist doctrine, at the heart of which is hatred of the Holy Trinity.
Crusade: What has been the attitude of the European bishops?
Mr. Solimeo: Regrettably, Catholic bishops have generally supported this mass immigration of Muslims in the name of interreligious dialogue. Some go even further and support the construction of mosques and Islamic cultural centers. Others allow Catholic schools to reserve rooms for Muslim prayer where they permit wearing the hijab (a cloth covering the head). If all this is not a suicidal attitude, I don’t know what else to call it.
Crusade: Someone could object: The U.S. has received large numbers of immigrants from all over the world, and this immigration has been very beneficial… What makes Muslim immigration any different?
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Mr. Solimeo: The difference is huge! The immigrants of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came to the U.S. and the Americas in general seeking to integrate into the life of their new countries, assimilating its culture and contributing to its progress.
However, this does not happen with the new Muslim immigrants in Europe. They do not want to integrate with Western Christian civilization. Instead, based on Islamic tenets, they want to destroy this civilization and impose their own doctrine and sharia law on the world.
In this sense, consider the testimony of Burak Bekdil, a journalist residing on the island of Lesbos, a gateway to Europe from the Middle East. When asked why he had left Turkey that had welcomed him, and decided to go to Western Europe, he replied, “I want to go to Europe to increase the Muslim population there.” Another immigrant added, “One day, we good Muslims will conquer these lands from the infidels.”
Crusade: Playing the role of “devil’s advocate,” what about the right to immigrate? Don’t these people have this right?
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Mr. Solimeo: According to Catholic doctrine and natural law, just as people have a right to immigrate, countries also have a right to regulate migration according to the conditions in their respective territories. Nations must safeguard the rights of their citizens and their identity, culture and religion. Otherwise, immigration would become an invasion in which outsiders would impose their law. It would give rise to all kinds of conflicts. In fact, just look at what is happening in Europe.
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Crusade: The media have been reporting on continuous attacks by Islamic immigrants in Europe. This does not prevent many — including Catholic bishops — from claiming that, although terrorists act in the name of Islam, such attacks are marginal and do not reflect Islam as a whole it is a “religion of peace.”
Mr. Solimeo: It is quite true that not every Muslim is a terrorist. Stating this would be an absurd exaggeration. However, an even greater exaggeration is to claim that Muhammad’s religion has nothing to do with the attitude of these radicals. This is why it is so important to see whether Islamic doctrine — as stated in the Koran, in the traditions of Muhammad (hadith) and the life of the “prophet” of Islam (Sirah) — allows or condemns the conquest of the world for Allah by the sword.
Crusade: From the history of Islam, we can see that its expansion throughout the Middle East and North Africa was done through military conquest…
Mr. Solimeo: Right. This also happened in Spain and southern France, where the Islamic threat stopped by Charles Martel. We see this later in Sicily, Greece and the Balkans. In the seventeenth century, Turkish troops arrived at the gates of Vienna.
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Crusade: Returning to doctrine, do the sacred books of Islam sanction imposing Muhammad’s religion upon others through war?
Mr. Solimeo: More than that. This is prescribed in the Koran and other Muslim texts. Let us look at some passages from the Koran (the first number refers to the chapter and the second to the verse):
- “And slay them [the idolaters] wherever ye catch them” (2:191).
- “Fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem [of war]” (9:5).
- “O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers” (9:123).
- “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews]” (9:29).
- “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger …. is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land…” (5:33).
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Crusade: But the media hardly mention these things… Did Muhammad also act this way?
Mr. Solimeo: The Egyptian Jesuit Fr. Henri Boulad, an expert on Islam, provides the following data, taken from Muslim sources (In parentheses is the classical Islamic author and the number in which the quote occurs):
- Muhammad had slaves and traded them (Sahih Muslim 3901), and commanded his followers to stone adulteresses (Muslim 4206).
- He decapitated 800 Jewish men and children (Abu Dawud 14:2665), ordered the death of women (Ibn Ishaq 819, 995) and killed those who insulted him (Bukhari 56:369, 4:241).
- According to Muhammad, the Jihad [“holy war”] on the path of Allah raises someone’s position in Paradise one hundred times (Muslim 4645).
- In the last ten years of his life, Muhammad led 65 military campaigns and attacks (Ibn Ishaq) and killed captives taken in battles (Ibn Ishaq 451).
- He encouraged his men to rape and enslave women (Abu Dawood 2150, Quran 4:24), and ordered them to kill “apostates.”
- After Muhammad’s death, his followers attacked and conquered the population of 28 countries and declared holy war against peoples of the world’s five greatest religions.
Another specialist is Prof. Richard A. Gabriel, a military historian at the Royal Military College of Canada. In a well-documented study on Muhammad as a military chief, he shows that “in the space of a single decade, [from 624 until his death in 632] he fought eight great battles, led 18 attacks, and planned 33 other military operations.”
Crusade: These facts about Muhammad are not known. Was he the one who initiated the concept of Jihad? By the way, could you define this expression, which is so used today when it comes to Islamic terrorism?
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Mr. Solimeo: A very well documented book by a great expert on Islam, Robert Spencer, has just been published. The title says it all: The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS. Muhammad preached Jihad not only with words but also deeds. He was the first Jihadi. As for the meaning of the word jihad, Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., one of the greatest Catholic specialists on Islam, explains that in the Koran “the word ‘jihad’ is always used to mean ‘fight for God’ … it is translated into European languages by ‘holy war.’”
Crusade: Returning to the link between Islamic doctrine and terrorist movements acting in the name of Islam, to what extent are these movements being faithful to the doctrine and example of Muhammad?
Mr. Solimeo: While insisting once again that every Muslim cannot be regarded as a terrorist, one cannot deny that Islamic doctrine leads to terrorism. Prof. Marie-Therese Urvoy, of the Catholic University of Toulouse, is categorical: “The terrorists apply the Koran and the prophetic traditions literally. Each act of ISIS [the Islamic State Organization] can be linked to one Islamic source or the other. In their own eyes, these fanatics do nothing but obey a divine order.” This is also the opinion of Professor Bernard Haykel of the University of Princeton, one of the greatest experts on the Islamic State. According to him, ISIS leaders have made imitating Muhammad a strict duty and revived traditions that have been inactive for hundreds of years. “What impresses is not only the literal way but also the seriousness with which they read these texts,” says Haykel. He concludes: “Theirs is an assiduous and obsessive seriousness that Muslims usually do not have.”
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Crusade: From a religious, let’s say, theological standpoint, what is the main difference between Islam and Christianity?
Mr. Solimeo: The main difference is so great that it eliminates any accidental similarity. It is their concept of God. According to Divine Revelation, God is One and Triune. This is the dogma of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you deny this fundamental dogma, there is no Christianity. That is because, with no Trinity, it can be no Incarnation of the Word or the Redemption. Mary Most Holy would no longer be the mother of God, and the Church would lose all meaning.
Instead of disregarding the existence of the Trinity as do other pagan religions, Islam takes note of and fights against it, calling it tritheism (worshiping three gods) or polytheism. The profession of Islamic faith, the shahada, which all Muslim must make, states: “There is no other god besides Allah; Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Abdullah Yusuf Ali, a renown Koranic translator and commentator, makes it very clear: “The doctrines on the Trinity … are repudiated as blasphemies.”
Crusade: Can you give some examples of these condemnations of the Trinity?
Mr. Solimeo: The Koran ridicules the Holy Trinity by saying that Allah is omnipotent and does not need other gods. It also says he could not have begotten a son because he was not married and did not have a wife. Let’s see some quotes:
“Do not say Trinity: Give up, it will be better for you because Allah is a God” (4:171).
“And they [Christians] say: Allah has begotten a son! Glory be to Him! Nay, to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth: everything renders worship to Him” (2:116).
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“They [Christians] say: ‘ (Allah) has begotten a son! ‘ — Glory be to Him. He is self-sufficient!” (10:68).
“How could he have a son without a companion [a wife]?” (6:101).
“He did not take unto himself a companion [a wife] or a son” (72:3).
Crusade: It is nonsense to suppose that God needed a wife to generate a son!
Mr. Solimeo: That is precisely what Saint Thomas Aquinas says in his Summa Contra Gentilesby point out that this assertion comes from a merely carnal, human conception of God that disregards His purely spiritual nature. Moreover, the Koran absurdly accuses Christians of worshipping Our Lady as part of the Holy Trinity:
“And remind them of when Allah will say: O Jesus, son of Mary! You told men: ‘Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’” (5:116).
Crusade: What are the practical consequences of this Muslim conception of the Most Holy Trinity as polytheistic?
Mr. Solimeo: Every Muslim persecution of Christians stems from the concept that Christians are “associators” (mushrikun), that is, they associate other gods with Allah because they believe in the Holy Trinity. For Islam, polytheism is the most serious sin, for which there is no forgiveness. The most immediate consequence of this erroneous view of the Trinity is the persecution and even killing of Christians, according to the verse called “The Sword”: “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them, catch them and arrest them, and keep a watchful eye for them wherever they may be” (9:5).
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Crusade: If Muslims deny the Holy Trinity, what is their conception of God?
Mr. Solimeo: Islam considers God to be pure omnipotence, an absolute power stripped of wisdom or love. The foundation of Islam is not love for God, but fear, submission, as expressed by the very name of Muhammad’s religion. Islam means submission. God is reduced to a pure arbitrary will, with the consequence that Pope Benedict XVI mentioned in his famous speech in Regensburg, Germany, in 2006: “For the Muslim doctrine, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not linked by any of our categories, even that of rationality.” He “is not bound even by his own word.”
Crusade: Can God then say one thing today and the opposite tomorrow?
Mr. Solimeo: Exactly. Thus, in the Koran, which is said to have been revealed by Allah, there are contradictory statements proper to a god without wisdom, who can negate himself. For example, the Koran says: “For any verse we abrogate or forget, we will make one better or equal. Do you not know that Allah, is omnipotent over all things?” (2:106).
Among the countless examples of contradiction, the Koran affirms that the Christians, Jews and Sabians will be saved in chapter 2:62, while in chapter 3:85 it states the exact opposite: “And those who seek a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted, and he, in the ultimate life, will be of the lost.”
Another example is about religious tolerance. Reading chapter 2:256, we can conclude that Islam preaches tolerance: “There is no religious coercion.” However, we have just seen that the verse of the Sword (9:5) days to “kill the polytheists,” which, of course, includes Christians.
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Crusade: How does a Muslim act in the face of such contradictory statements?
Mr. Solimeo: Based on a text of chapter 2:106, Muslim masters created the doctrine of abrogation. This means that when the verses revealed later, contradict previous verses, these latter ones cancel and abrogate the earlier ones. One of the consequences of the doctrine of abrogation is that all verses that preach tolerance have been abrogated by verses that preach jihad said to have been revealed later. This is the opinion of the authoritative professors Dominique and Marie-Thérèse Urvoy: “It is generally accepted that the124 verses of the Koran, encouraging peace and forgiveness, are abrogated by verse 4 (on jihad) of sura 47.” Alexander Knysh makes the same statement in The Cambridge Companion to the Qur’an.
Crusade: Playing the role of “devil’s advocate again,” does the fact that Islam accepts Jesus as a prophet not bring it closer to Christianity?
Mr. Solimeo: On the contrary! This is one of the consequences of its denial of the Holy Trinity. To reduce Our Lord to a mere prophet is to deny His divinity and therefore the whole Catholic doctrine. This also denies Divine Revelation, as found in the Gospels, in which Our Lord clearly affirms His divinity.
Crusade: In what sense does the Koran say that Jesus is a prophet?
Mr. Solimeo: The Koran recognizes the miracles of Jesus and even calls him “Messiah,” but not in the sense of the Redeemer of mankind, since Islam does not accept the doctrine of Original Sin.
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For Islam, Jesus is a lesser prophet who comes to announce Muhammad, the last and greatest of the prophets, and the one who was given the definitive revelation of the Koran. For example, in chapter 61:6, blasphemous words are attributed to Jesus with which the Savior himself ‘acknowledges’ being only the announcer of the greatest of prophets: “And remember, Jesus, the son of Mary, said: ‘O Children of Israel! I am the messenger of Allah (sent) to you, confirming the Law (which came) before me, and giving Glad Tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad’” (61:6).
The difficulty for Mohammedans is that all Jesus announced in the Gospels in this regard was that false prophets would appear after his death… (Mt 7:15; 24:11; 24:24-25).
Crusade: They also say that Muslims venerate Jesus and his Blessed Mother…
Mr. Solimeo: Here is how Marie Thérèse Urvoy summarizes the Christology of the Koran: “Koranic Christology, therefore, consists essentially of four values, presented in the form of absolute negations… Jesus is not God (5:72, 116) because he took food (5:75); Jesus is not the son of God (9:30; 19:34-35); Jesus is not the third part of a triad, as the Trinity is assimilated to polytheism (4:171; 5: 73); finally, Jesus was not crucified (4:157).” Thus, there is nothing in common between Our Lord Jesus Christ as presented in the Gospels and as we profess in the Creed, and Jesus the “prophet” of Islam. Moreover, according to Muhammad, Jesus would return to Earth to destroy all crosses, the symbol of our redemption.
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Crusade: From all we have talked about, Islam clearly represents a real danger both for the Faith and for freedom in Western countries. What can be done in the face of this?
Mr. Solimeo: In very complex situations, we need, first of all, to try to understand the problem well and analyze its causes. Then we can study possible solutions. The Islamic danger presents itself at a time when the West finds itself at the height of a destructive process that Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira called the Revolution. We are in the midst of a crisis in which people’s minds are confused. There is a lack of certainty and moral parameters.
In short, we are very close to chaos. However, on the horizon, there is a glimmer of hope that does not come from men, but God. It is Our Lady’s message at Fatima, in which she asserted that Russia will be converted, her Immaculate Heart will triumph, and the world will be given a time of peace.
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Crusade: Is it possible to make a connection between the message of Fatima and Islam?
Mr. Solimeo: In my view, yes. For the Immaculate Heart of Mary to triumph and the world to have peace, the conversion of Russia and the end of communism alone are not enough. I believe that a victory of Most Holy Mary over Islam is also necessary. Indeed, how could the Immaculate Heart triumph over the whole world – which is the meaning of her message – if much of the planet is under the Muslim yoke and the rest is in danger of falling into its clutches? We need to remember that Fatima was the name of Muhammad’s daughter. Was it merely a coincidence that Our Lady appeared in a place with that name? I conclude my book with these considerations. I hope that this book will provide elements for a better understanding of the Islamic danger and help readers develop possible practical means to oppose it. It is also meant to give hope because without hope, people are discouraged, and the struggle becomes impossible.
Crusade: Thank you for this interview.