I hate to admit to it but, in the weeks immediately following September 11th, I initially bought into the widely-circulated platitudes about the ‘peaceful’ nature of Islam. It would be fair to say (if one were trying to put it as mildly as possible) that my position has since changed.

Many have noted in recent months that I’ve spent an increasing amount of time discussing the broader Islamic threat as opposed to merely the Islamist threat. That’s because I’ve come to a simple conclusion: if Western Civilization is to survive, Islam must be destroyed. The two are not compatible and cannot co-exist on a single planet.

Some of the bolder souls on the right have moved beyond the initial belief that the present war is merely against “terrorism” to the more specific belief that we are fighting “Islamists.” But, allow me to ask a question: how are we to distinguish what is Islamist from what is merely Islamic? The answer, in truth, is that we can’t. The Islamist operative planning to blow up the Sears Tower is to the Moslem in Tehran what the Communist agent in Washington was to the Moscow factory worker in the Cold War. Both are part of the same evil system, only their guilt differs.

Islamism is merely the leading edge of Islam. Islamism and Islam are, in practice, one and the same. It’s just that the Islamist detonates the bombs while the simple supporter of Islam merely cheers the news of their detonation.

The only way I see to draw a distinction between the Islam and Islamism is to take and judge each individual on a case-by-case basis. This is, of course, not possible. Just as we were forced to act against all of Germany for the crimes of Nazism, so too must all of Islam pay for the crimes of the Islamists.

There may well be some “good Moslems” out there. If there are, I say: let them speak now or forever hold their peace. Most of the Moslem world is silent about the crimes of their co-religionists.

“Islam” isn’t just a religion: it’s a political ideology prepared to offer a serious challenge to the supremacy of the West. “Islam”, as I speak of it, is no benign creed: it is a faith of action on the march, determined to win for its adherents a leading place in world affairs. Ultimately, it is a totalitarian ideology which seeks the same sort of universal control over human affairs as its true predecessors, Communism and Nazism, did.

Just as we confronted and destroyed both Nazism and Communism, we must do the same for Islam.

This is not to say that one or the other will be destroyed in a Holy War (though that may be the case) but it is to say that one will be transformed and ultimately consumed by the other. I do not as of now know which will be destroyed. But we will all know it before long.

The words call to me from the recess of the Western mind: Islam Delenda Est. Islam must be destroyed. Again and again, they come. These are words that emanate from a dark place, where men are stripped of all pretence and formality, but it does not change their essential truth. For one to survive, the other must fall. Islam must be destroyed.

This does not mean that it is necessary or desirable that everyone who call themselves a Moslem be killed, far from it. It is to say that it is necessary that the basic structures of their lives be transformed.

Islam can be destroyed in two ways: as Communism was destroyed or as Nazism was destroyed.

By invading Iraq, President Bush has clearly chosen to destroy Islam in the same way that the United States destroyed Soviet Communism. Spread the ideals of freedom and the truth of democracy, this line of reasoning goes, and no totalitarian society can survive. The world of modern Islam, this theory holds, will collapse in the face of freedom and be replaced by a new society which, ideally, will be post-Islamic in the way that our societies are post-Christian.

I hope and pray that President Bush’s strategy will work. It’s certainly better than the only other alternative (basically a phased surrender) which has any popular support. But I’m not so sure that it will work.

The great problem with staging our battle against Islam over the long-term is this: the demographics are not on our side. It took forty-five years to win the Cold War. Do we have forty-five years to wait for the collapse of modern Islam?

Consider: as things stand today, eight million of France’s sixty million people are Moslems. The Moslem birth rate (plus continued immigration) means that the Islamic population of France is rapidly increasing while its native population is actually shrinking. What will the composition of the French population be in thirty years?

It’s not at all hard to envision the emergence of a Moslem majority in France during my lifetime. Already, France’s Moslems are having a disastrous effect on French foreign policy, leading towards an even more pronounced anti-American tilt in both action and rhetoric.

France is, of course, the typical example. So let me offer another one: Canada. In 1991 there were about 250,000 Moslems in Canada. By 2001 there were nearly 600,000. And that’s just the official estimate: given widespread illegal entry and other forms of lawlessness, I suspect (and the Moslem community claims) that the actual number is much higher. It’s not at all implausible to believe that, in a few decades, Moslems will make up higher than 10% of Canada’s population and that, if the numbers were allowed to increase unchecked from there, that Canada would eventually end up in a France-like bind.

In the present conflict waiting will equal a victory for the other side. Islam is winning its war with the West not on the battlefield but in the delivery room.