"To reckon with Islam"

"WE no longer regarded Islam as a rival to our own culture. We thought of its religion as a sort of fossilised thing about which we need no trouble. That was almost certainly a mistake. We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near future. Perhaps if we lose our faith it will rise."

~Hilaire Belloc: Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church  (1929)

'What ruin false doctrine can bring'

"IF we could get a full picture of what all that sea-world was in early Christian time and compare it with what we see to-day we should understand what ruin false doctrine can bring "upon the world. The ancient paganism, being a preparation for the Faith, did no such hurt. It was Mohammedanism, the greatest and most virulent of the heresies (and most persistent), which must bear the blame."

~Hilaire Belloc: On Patmos

Islam, a Great Heresy

"THE MOHAMMEDAN attack was a different kind. It came geographically outside the area of Christendom; it appeared, almost from the outset, as a foreign enemy; yet it was not, strictly speaking, a new religion attacking the old, it was essentially a heresy; but from the circumstances of its birth was a heresy alien rather than intimate. It threatened to kill the Christian Church by invasion rather than undermine it from within."

~Hilaire Belloc: "The Great Heresies."