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June 12, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
47:59
WarRoom Battleground EP 787: Warnings About Islam’s “Demographic Jihad” Against The Judeo-Christian West
Participants
Main voices
b
ben harnwell
15:48
r
raymond ibrahim
21:42
Appearances
f
frank walker
03:17
j
jenny holland
03:40
Clips
j
jake tapper
00:08
s
steve bannon
00:19
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
unidentified
Pray for our enemies.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Because we're going medieval on these people.
I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
unidentified
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
frank walker ▲ ● ▼
I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
unidentified
It's going to happen.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
unidentified
MAGA Media.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
unidentified
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
unidentified
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance.
Vance.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Wednesday 11th of June, Anno Domini 2025, Ben Harnwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's War Room.
Welcome, folks.
Thanks for tuning in.
We're going to carry on something that we launched last week.
There are two guests who were here last week, Frank Walker and Jenny Holland.
They're sitting by, waiting to come in later as we chew over the week's most important developments in the whole arena of Christianity and the fight for the Christian faith.
In the public square.
But my first guest today, Raymond Ibrahim.
Raymond, thanks for coming on the show.
I first saw your writings and your analysis some 15 or so years ago.
I've been following you since then.
You had some great contributions to make on Jihad Watch, which is a great website run by Robert Spencer.
But in the intervening years, I know you've produced a number of books.
We're going to talk about your third one in your trilogy right now.
But you've also put out stuff with the Gate Stone Institute, which I also subscribe to, by the way.
You've been involved with the Middle East Forum, and I think you've been a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute.
So you've got a whole sackload of experience under your belt.
Tell us a bit, though, about your new book, which is The Two Swords of Christ.
I know this is the third one in your series, and the first two books have had huge resonance in our segment here.
Before you tell us about what the book's about, tell us what inspired you to write it, because I think in all three of these books, there are messages to our contemporary time.
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, good to be with you, Ben.
Well, it's hard to talk about that book without talking about its predecessors, the other two, because they all have a sort of synergistic effect on one another.
They complement one another.
So just to briefly summarize, the first book, Sword and Scimitar, subtitle, 14 Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, really traces the history of conflict between Islam and the West, which, of course, is its modern term.
Historically, it was Christendom.
And I start really from the beginning with the first couple of years after Muhammad's lifetime with the first battle in 636.
And we fast forward all the way until America's first war as a nation, the Barbary Wars with Muslims.
And I highlight the decisive battles and how they really had a tremendous impact on the shaping of the world that very few people know.
There's a European, an older European historian, his name is Franco Cardini, and he said very memorably that Islam was a violent midwife to Europe because so much of what Europe really became was a byproduct of continuous aggression from surrounding Islam.
And we and the book also shows Sword and Scimitar that.
All of that was actually the was Not just Christian.
It was actually the greater part of Christendom.
And so Islam, I show in that book, in the first few chapters, how Islam just completely, in one century, conquered all that region from Egypt and greater Syria, the Middle East, all the way to Morocco, and then even got into Spain.
So a lot of people are not aware of that.
so much of what was once Christendom about 66 or 70% if you look at a map was actually permanently swallowed up by Islam.
And later by the Turks, Asia Minor, what we call Turkey today was one of Epistles are in there.
Book of Revelation talks about its cities.
So anyway, that's Sword and Scimitar.
Defenders of the West was sort of similar, but it was more of biographies.
I chose eight biographies of eight men who I identify as defenders of Christendom vis-a-vis Islam.
And it also moves chronologically.
And I know a lot of people find that very inspiring.
and that's partially why I also wanted to write it.
And the newest book now, The Two Swords of Christ.
I originally conceived it as a book about the military orders, but eventually it just became about the two primary ones really who spearheaded the defense of Christendom, which would be the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of the Hospital, or the Templars and Hospitallers respectively.
And that I think, you know, the relevance of that book, well, what it is, is just a history, again, it's a history of those.
And in fact, that's the title of the book.
Two Swords of Christ is a reference to the passage in Luke where Christ says, you know, sell your garment and buy a sword.
And his disciples say, look, Lord, here are two swords.
And he says, that is enough.
Now, even though that verse has been allegorized into absolute meaninglessness today, it actually meant something to pre-modern and especially medieval Christians.
And what it meant is there's two sorts of evil and you have two kinds of swords to fight against them.
You have a secular sword against physical evil and you have a spiritual sword against spiritual evil.
Modern-day Christians only believe in the latter one, apparently, and they've completely lost focus on the former, which is a physical sword.
So we get into the theology of how they came to rise to power, and you find it amazing, again today, in our modern Christian Western climate.
To be a Christian is, you know, to be passive and to be tolerant and, you know, to be a doormat in many ways.
But these guys who were essentially monks and really lived very pious lives were also very violent men.
And so, you know, reconciling the twain seems to be odd.
And I think it's very fascinating when you understand the sort of theological understanding that they had.
Another thing that medieval Christians did that modern day, you know, Go ahead.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Sorry, Raymond.
I'm going to go into this because we have a few minutes to break this down in a bit more detail as we go on in the show.
But first of all, I want to ask you, is it your thesis then that from when Mohammed first appeared in the 6th century, right?
In the late 5th century?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
7th century.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
6th century.
Is it your thesis that there has basically been a continuous physical battle, and you can also argue a spiritual battle vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam, all throughout this period, and that battle is still taking place in the present day?
Or is it your thesis that, talking about the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, these things are really, these are historically battles that belonged in the past?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
No, it's the former.
It's a continuous war.
So historically, again, Sword and Scimitar is the book that does this.
Historically, it shows you that the war was nonstop.
Of course, I mean, when we're talking 14 centuries, there's going to be times of peace because of whatever reason, and there's truces, etc., etc.
But the general hostility was constant overall.
You remember, Islam, Muhammad is 7th century, dies at 632.
And in the 16th century, in the 1500s, you have Muslims going to Iceland and Denmark to raid and England.
To raid slaves under the same exact logic that the Quran tells us.
You're an infidel, a kafir, etc.
However, having said that, what I would contend is that what's happening is the same hostility has gone on, except it's taken different manifestations and different guises.
And it's continuous.
The continuum from the Muslim side is unwavering.
The problem is the discontinuity of the West.
In other words, and this is why it's good and timely to read about men like this, these knights, and how they perceived this war, which was both physical and spiritual in their mind, hence the two swords.
But now, you know, it's taken forms.
Islam is so weak and the forebearers of Europe and the Western Christians would be turning in their graves to see that finally the West is supreme, more powerful technologically, economically, militarily, and it's still suffering worse than when – That was the weak one.
That was the one who was being battered and was like, really, until maybe 17th century and so forth, or 16th century.
So now, though, you got the same hostility.
So let's say Europe brings in all these, you know, the demographic change and they're bringing millions of migrants from the Muslim world.
And lo and behold, they're doing the same sorts of things that they did when they used to invade Europe with the sword.
But now they're being welcomed in.
So, you know, it's the same kind of thing that's going on.
Churches all throughout Europe and in Western countries are constantly being attacked and desecrated.
Crosses are being broken.
And so to me, it's a pattern of unwavering hostility that goes all the way back to the seventh century.
But because the West has kind of distanced itself from its own heritage and, you know, broken away from Christendom and that idea, um, it, It doesn't see it.
doesn't understand it it's working under this guise of multiculturalism and you know any problem that goes on it has to do with you know economics uh or grievances and so they don't understand the sort of existential hostility that has been just unwavering and well doc as i document in my books it's not hasn't stopped and it's still going on what what about this thesis that you'll find pretty much in most of the media and modern academia that here were these peaceable muslims just getting on with their life
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
and you have the brutality That's basically the modern perception, the narrative that you'll pick up here in the West.
Well, what's your reading on that?
And is your book in some ways a corrective to that?
That alternative history, that fake history.
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Exactly.
In regards to the latter point, exactly.
The reason I wrote these books, this trilogy, essentially is as a corrective to that narrative.
And you're also right.
That is the predominant narrative.
It's what I call fake history.
And as I often say, fake history is much more dangerous than fake news because it creates overarching narratives and paradigms that people sift current events through.
So if you believe what you just said, not you, but people in general, and they do.
That, you know, medieval Christians and Crusaders were the aggressors.
Muslims were peaceful, tolerant victims.
If you believe that, of course, then you fast forward and you look at events today.
And, I mean, you know, a few years ago, I think, like, thousands of Germans did a march to the Holy Land wearing shirts with Arabic.
It said, I'm sorry for the Crusades, okay?
So it puts you in this position where you feel like you have to make concessions because you're the bad guy.
Let's make up for what our ancestors did.
But if you actually, you know, and it's so diabolical the way that this fake history, because I've really read a lot of books written by secondary historians who are supposed to be well-renowned, and the things they say, it's just, you know, I'll give you one example.
You know, well-known professor John Esposito from Georgetown University, which is where I attended for a while.
And, you know, he's the editor-in-chief of Oxford Books on Islam, and he's written so many books published by the Oxford University Press.
And he literally says in one of his books, I think it's called Islam, the Straight Path.
He says five centuries of peaceful coexistence between Muslims and Christians elapsed before an imperial papal power play led to series of so-called holy wars that have left an enduring legacy of mistrust.
In other words...
The reality, as I sort of alluded earlier, is the complete opposite.
In those five centuries, Islam destroyed and wreaked havoc all throughout Christendom.
In one year alone, according to a Muslim historian, in the year 1009, the caliph, the Fatibid caliph in Egypt, Hakim Ba 'amrullah, According to Muslim historian Al-Makrizi, he destroyed 30,000 churches in greater Syria and Egypt, including the Holy Sepulter, which he razed to the ground.
And this is during the five centuries of peaceful coexistence.
So even leading up to the First Crusade, the mass havoc and the massacres that the Turks were causing in Asia Minor and attacks and rapes on nuns who were going on pilgrimage, that's exactly what the Christians spoke about at Clermont, at the Council of Clermont with Pope Urban II.
It was that.
It was to redress and defend Christendom from what was happening.
But that has been so expunged today, and, you know, it starts off like I just told you with that quote.
And the same page that John Esposito, where he says five centuries apiece, you know, he also says he mockingly dismisses the fact that when the Crusaders said Deus Vult, God wills it, he writes, yeah, God may have willed it, but there's no evidence that the Christians in the Holy Land willed it.
Well, all contraire, and as I showed in a recent article and video, there's copious evidence of Middle Eastern Christians, Syriac, Armenian, who when the Crusaders came, they just threw themselves and kissed their feet because they helped alleviate what was happening to them, which was mass persecution by Muslims.
So yeah, this is a very, I think there is a force out there that is very scared that Western Christian men might start sort of gravitating and find appealing medieval Christian men, specifically the two knight groups that I spoke about in the Two Swords of Christ, the Knights of the Temple and Hospital.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Tell me something, Raymond.
What do you think about the Catholic Church in the decades following the Second Vatican Council?
Has it had a role to play in trying to present the truth behind the defence of Christians in the Middle East under Islamic conquest?
Or has it, do you think, rather somewhat sold the pass behind a deceptively...
Could it have done more?
And are you looking towards the new Pope, Leo XIV, to change the position somewhat from the position of Pope Francis and his numerous declarations, like I think it was Abu Dhabi, his declaration with regards to Islam.
And are you looking and hoping for a change under the new Pope?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, as far as the first question, no, it has not done enough, especially under Pope Francis.
You know, he he was much more, it seems, interested in just dialogue and trying to show, you know, some fraternal.
And he did a lot of these meetings with the Grand Imam of Egypt, Sheikh Ahmad al-Tayyib.
And it's just, you know, as a person like me who watches and reads in Arabic, and I get to watch the Sheikh.
So I would watch Pope Francis and the Sheikh talking and hugging each other and kissing each other and talking about peace and love and how Muslims and Christians are, you know, brother religions and should help each other.
And then I would watch the Sheikh speaking in Arabic saying the exact opposite.
Sounding not unlike ISIS, you know, when it comes to the Christian is the catheter, the infidel, we can't have churches and all that sort of thing.
But of course, he doesn't speak it the way ISIS does.
He tries to be a little more diplomatic, but it's the same mentality.
And Al-Azhar, which is, you know, almost like the equivalent of the Vatican, people will say, of the Islamic world, is notorious for publishing books that what we would call radical Islam.
And they have no choice because those are the books of Islam, the Hadith, the Sira, the biography of Muhammad, and all the special studies.
So it's a one-sided thing and a lot of the Muslims and when Christians from the Middle East watch this, they just – they can't believe it because he's being so hoodwinked, Pope Francis.
Unless, of course, he knew that and it doesn't matter because he just wants to put a show of, hey, we're signing all these – Let me just stop you there.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
What's your reading of the situation?
Because no one follows these things more attentively than you.
Do you think Bergoglio was acting in good faith?
Or do you think he was actually acting in bad faith with his presentation to Catholics that Islam is a peaceful religion?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
You know, the only way to answer that question is, you know, what's his intelligence level?
You know, did he really believe what he was saying?
Or, you know, is he that naive?
Or was this wishful thinking?
Or is this just, like I said, kind of a show?
I think it's a little bit of all.
It's a combination.
He's hoping, but he also knows.
Probably not.
Especially when people like me would expose what his counterpart would say and do soon thereafter, after these meetings.
But as far as, you know, and he would, for example, write encyclicals about the environment.
But it's like, you could have written an encyclical about the fact that something like, I think the latest estimate, Published by the human rights group Open Doors, on their world watch list is, I don't know, like 400 million Christians around the world are being persecuted, and some of them really graphically.
In Nigeria, you have two Christians being killed every hour, okay, for their faith.
So you would think, as the Pope, and here's the irony, when you go back and you study the history, and as I show in these books, the men who spearheaded the Crusades were the Popes.
These were the guys who were the most stalwart resistors against Islamic violence and the spread of Islam.
And so it's funny now when you fast forward to a Pope Francis and they come off so wishy-washy.
As far as the new pope, I think one can have some hope, but in the end, I just feel a lot of these...
They can't help but have to be diplomatic.
So there's probably only so much he will say or do, though I think he understands the situation better.
He's already talked about, I don't remember the exact details, but he's already referenced that Christians are being persecuted.
So that's a good sign.
And we just need, it would be nice for popes to go back to how they used to be in a way, when they were the chief defenders of the faith.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
It would indeed be nice to go back to the way things used to be when popes were Catholic.
Look, we've got a break coming up in five minutes.
There is a story that I wanted to quickly hit with you, but I think we'll hold it over now until after the break.
One thing I did want to ask you, however, listening to you talk, is that it's conscious to me that...
That You've got this whole thing in social media about the manosphere.
And as I was sort of listening to you talking about this muscular form of Christianity that we saw in the past, and I know you elsewhere, you've described Templars and Hospitallers as not as soldiers and not as cloistered monks, but both together at the same time.
Given that Chaps...
I've really had a back seat in the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council.
And there is a moment taking place now within this wider Manosphere concept.
Just tell me something about your reading of this situation.
Is there anything that is going in the books, these three books, but specifically the Two Swords of Christ, that speaks to this contemporary dynamic, specifically about men leading up and taking leadership roles within the church once again.
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Again, it's this fusion of piety and militancy, which is so alien to your modern-day Christian who has just been bred into becoming a doormat.
You know, they've taken...
the whole idea, this turn the other cheek has been so, I think, weaponized by people who actually hate Christianity and at the same time I often wonder to myself, you know, Or is the first premise that they're really cowards and they found a pious pretext to hide behind, which is, you know, I don't want to be confrontational, I don't want to be judgmental, I don't want to do anything, and oh yeah, because Jesus told me to.
I'm starting to think that's really what's going on and that they've been bred to become so passive, so cowardly.
A lot of men in the West, and obviously I'm generalizing.
generalizing and a lot of men are not like that in the West, obviously.
But I think it's been weaponized, this passive side of...
If you go back in pre-modern time, you know, even though it seems so taken for granted today that Christianity is passive and peaceful and does nothing, no one thought that way, you know.
So this is a new idea that has really been – it's a classic heresy, right?
A heresy is you take one aspect of religion and you Where's the aspect of, you know, overturning tables and a whip of cords and driving people out due to righteous indignation?
You know, where do you get that?
It's missing.
And it wasn't missing for pre-modern men, for medieval men.
There was very much, there was no conflict whatsoever between loving your neighbor and fighting and defending them and killing.
You know, when you think about it, both the Knights of the Temple and the Knights of the Hospital, They were working on the verse, you know, loving your fellow man as you love yourself.
And loving God, that's what led to the Crusades.
So the Templars, because when Christians would go on pilgrimages after the First Crusade, and now Jerusalem's under Crusader control, they were still being killed and attacked by Muslims.
So in their origin, the Templars were just basically a vanguard to protect.
Pilgrims.
And then the hospitalers is even more telling because these were actually the men who were like a care worker.
People who would come and it was a hospice and they would care for them and they would wash them and feed them and clothe them.
And these are the guys who became militant and violent because to them in the end it was, why am I going to sit in the hospital and wait until you get attacked by Muslims and then try to resuscitate you?
Why don't I actually go and prevent it, preemptive strike, by protecting you?
So it's amazing that, but for us today, and this is why you don't hear about these knights and the Templars have I think it's because if you really study them, they are appealing to Christian masculinity and that's why there's a concerted effort to keep them suppressed or to demonize them or to turn them into all the nonsense that they've been turned into.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Which ironically isn't a problem that exists within the Islamic world.
Far from it, ironically.
It's interesting that what you mentioned, and I hadn't considered that before, that basically the beta male mentality can hide behind the precepts of our Lord and present themselves as sort of a prudential form of interior spirit.
Spirituality, when in fact it's just playing up in your face cowardice, right?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, they're making a virtue out of a vice, okay?
It's cowardice, and they hide behind, because think about it, you know, non-confrontationalism, non-judgmentalism, non, you know, being tolerant of everything.
Well, that's the easy route.
That's the easy thing to do, because you never get in anyone's face, you never resist.
So I think a lot of people have adopted that and that comes first.
That's the first premise.
And then the second premise is what Jesus said.
What it should be is that you want to do right, and if someone strikes you, you want to actually kill them, but you don't.
You control yourself.
That's how it should be, alright?
And that's what Jesus, I believe, was The one verse, Jesus actually gets slapped in the Gospels.
He didn't turn his other cheek.
He actually challenged the man.
So clearly, this is a very symbolic thing to say, and it should never, in any way, shape, or form, be actually practiced.
And no one did.
Because they had just warned.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Okay.
Raymond Ibrahim, hold on to that.
We're going to come back after the break.
I'm going to come back with Frank Walker, actually, in just a couple of minutes.
because I want his take on what you were just saying about this aspect of cowardice masquerading itself as piety because I think we find that before anything else within our Catholic hierarchy.
Folks, stand by.
We're back with a story that I think follows directly on from that in happenings in France and Chartres.
Back in two minutes.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Welcome back.
So last week we had Frank Walker on the show, who's the founder and editor of Canon 212.
The best way of describing that is basically the Catholic Drudge.
And it's a website that I go to several times a day throughout the day because there's no other source out there in the world on the internet keeping people briefed in real time about what's going on, specifically within the Catholic ambit.
Frank, let's come to you because I want to pick up on what Raymond was saying in the first half here.
First-class example of that.
Picking up on a couple of these stories, the most important stories that have taken place within Christianity over the last week.
And by the way, folks, we've got something on the Southern Baptist Convention for next Wednesday for all of you evangelicals.
Some great news, by the way, coming out of the evangelical world.
But Frank, tell us a bit about Chartres and the pilgrimage there.
There's a bit of good news there, but something for Catholics to be extremely wary about.
frank walker ▲ ● ▼
Well, the pilgrimage of Chartres is something that makes the traditionalist Catholics very happy, and it's been growing every year.
I think it's like 4,000 more people than it was last year, about 20,000 people in total.
These are all traditionalist Catholics that like the Latin Mass.
Which means that they're also faithful to everything that the church teaches.
And it's a 60-mile walk, and it's just getting more popular every year.
A lot of young people, I think the average age is 20 years old, that are there.
And the faithful Catholic, I don't really like the word traditionalist too much because that's sort of a slur.
It's really just faithful Catholic, and they like the ancient Catholic mass.
They have a lot of children.
They have young families.
They are really, really despised by the main Catholic Church.
And even the wider secular world attacks them, too.
So they had this pilgrimage, but this year, for the first time, they put some restrictions on it.
They put them under review, a certain review by the Bishop of Chartres.
And he's done something that is really insidious.
He said that they have to be able to say the real, the, the, And the orders, the FSSP and the ICK that are involved in this and then the SSPX, they don't want to say that new mass.
And for them to have to permit that kind of thing really undermines it.
It really doesn't have anything to do with this pilgrimage for them to do this.
The bishops, they're all glomming onto it, saying how it's so great and everything.
The fact that they have to do this is targeting them directly all the time, not just in the pilgrimage, just their very best thing, using it to undermine them every day.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Now, you think a pilgrimage, and I think the average age of 19 or 20,000 people that participate in this, the average age of which is 20, you would think that a country like France, I saw your piece that you put out on Stumbling Block, which is, I think, your personal website.
Earlier, and you mentioned, if I'm not mixing these things in my head, you mentioned that the bishop, the swishup, concerned in this diocese of Chartres, was trying to invoke the holy presence, the holy name of Leo.
To suggest that he was accompanying them in prayer.
And that had no foundation.
In fact, just say a bit about what he said and why he said it, this bishop.
And what your conclusion is about that.
frank walker ▲ ● ▼
He said simply was that Leo has said that he prays for pilgrimages.
I don't know when.
I don't know what the context was.
The whole Catholic trad media, the faithful Catholic media has said, no, he's praying for the pilgrims at charts.
There's such a push to try to make Leo look like something different.
They're still hoping that he's going to remove the restrictions on the ancient Massive Francis added in there.
And so it's just amazing to see that they would use that, that they'll do any kind of stretch.
These are our own people talking to each other.
The all-faithful Catholic media telling each other these stories that are really not true at all.
And, of course, this bishop, and they like to glom onto it like parasites to the growth of the Church.
I think that the trad movement is responsible for a lot of what they're seeing as this young, new growth in the Catholic Church we're seeing in the news in the last couple weeks.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
just to fill in a few details here, because Frank, you were talking about the traditional Latin mass.
This, by the way, would be the mass The canon of that Mass goes back, I think, to the 3rd century.
So you can have a view on the old Mass in Latin.
you can have a view on the vernacular.
The fact would seem to be that when the church prayed and said the old Latin mass had expanded, right across the world, is that there is a spiritual battle going on, right?
That's the fundamental point.
It's a spiritual battle.
And as Raymond Ibrahim in the first half of the show was saying, it's a literal battle too.
So we Catholics need to get our act together.
Hold on, I'm going to come back to you just in a few moments, because there are further developments here in the growth of Christianity, or the growth of what is being called Christianity, whether it isn't.
That's something for a future show.
Jenny Holland, you're, I think, the war room's atheist of choice to come to.
You pray the rosary every day, which, of course, sort of...
You pray the rosary every day.
You've had a huge, explosive traction whenever you come on the show.
Tell us about this story about Catholicism being cool again, will you?
Because I think there are a couple of takeaways for this evening's topic of conversation.
jenny holland ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, the Free Press had an interesting article, I think it was last week, about Gen Z turning toward Catholicism in particular.
And as much as I'd like to say I'm in my 20s, I am no longer, but I am also doing it.
So I understand the impulse.
I think the things that are driving young people to the church are the same things that I'm seeing and that are horrifying to me.
But if you're a 20-year-old or a 21-year-old or a 22-year-old, those effects are massively, they're much bigger.
Because I at least remember the days before the Internet when society still had a modicum of common sense and something of a moral foundation.
Kids who are in their 20s now don't remember that world.
That world is gone.
So they need something to fulfill their own goals.
It's not taught in schools.
It's not common.
It's not expected to be enforced within families even, although many families still do, obviously.
But the weight of the culture is toward hollow promiscuity, immediate self-gratification, nihilism and violence.
People have an innate need to reach for something higher, and that is what we're seeing with young people.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Jenny, isn't there something in this article here, and I quote, that there's a great need to recover the sense of mystery?
At Catholic Mass.
And I will tie, if I have time, I will tie all of these segments in together because I think there's a straight line to all of these things.
Nature abhors a vacuum, folks.
If Christianity is leaving the public space, then expect something else to come in and fill that.
And that's what Islam is doing.
And if we're going to be serious about opposing that, we need to be sort of serious about what it is that we're presenting to people.
But there's this aspect here in this article And it's the very thing, right?
We just heard Frank Walker talking about this 19,000-strong pilgrimage shot.
The very thing that kids are looking out for and thirsting for are the very things that the bishops are trying to take away from them.
But could you just give me your take on that point, please?
jenny holland ▲ ● ▼
Well, just from literally a layman's perspective, the transcendence and the smells and the bells, which is what the article referenced, is the edge that Catholicism has over other forms, or at least many forms of Protestantism.
And that has been the case for a long time.
And I think I mentioned last week, my great aunt in her 20s, you know, in the early 20th century, converted from being a Protestant to being a Catholic for that exact reason.
She found it a huge relief, the beauty of the mass from her everyday life where she worked in a factory and whatnot.
And I would, you know, woe betide church hierarchy who thinks that they can abandon these old ways because that is the only strength that they have left at this point.
The traditional mass is, as this article points out and other people have spoken to, is growing in popularity and is attracting people who grew up in a very secular world because they long for the beauty of it, whereas the newer forms, the later 20th century forms, have none of that.
I've seen that in my own life.
I've been to a Latin mass near me several times, and I've been to a...
And the Latin Mass has more people attending.
The entire point of this is that people want an escape from modernity.
So if the Catholic Church thinks it's going to win over new people by reinforcing modernity, and especially modern morality, which is a bit of a horror show, actually, they are absolutely mistaken.
And you have to question, do they really even believe that?
It would be hard for me to believe that they believe that because it's so obviously untrue.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Jenny, thanks for that.
Thanks very much for that.
Raymond, look, in the closing minutes of this show, I know there's this article here from the Washington Post, which I think dovetails...
We heard from Frank Walker about the procession, the pilgrimage in Chartres, which was actually, you saw the bishops there trying to stamp down on the very thing that young people are thirsting for.
You heard what Jenny Holland was just saying, she's not a Catholic.
Not a believer, but she's saying the same thing again and again of people searching for the sacred, for the transcendent.
How do you tie this in, all these themes that we've been discussing about on the show?
Tell me about this article in the Washington Post specifically, about the numbers and how things are going.
And obviously with the narrative of what you're talking about, of this 1,500, 1,600 year battle.
Vis-a-vis Christianity and Islam.
What are the numbers like?
What are the dynamics taking place in the West today, in the world today?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, so, as I had indicated, you know, the jihad and the crusade, which went on for centuries until recently, the jihad continues, but there is, of course, absolutely no crusade.
It's taken different guises and one of them, of course, is this demographic jihad.
They actually call that.
It's called that.
Remember, the word jihad, people, apologists will tell you, it doesn't mean holy war.
It means struggle, strive.
It does.
And that makes it even more dangerous because historically, the only way you were going to struggle and strive against Christians was through force because they weren't going to give up or betray their heritage and their faith just for fun like they are today.
But it also meant strive in different ways.
You can strive with your money.
You can fund the jihad.
Strive by propaganda or lying.
Then there's the baby jihad, which is they actually encourage Muslims, men and women, to keep procreating children.
And you go now into Europe and almost every large western city, Oslo.
There's so many of them.
I wrote about them.
Maybe four or five capitals.
And the number one name of newborn baby boys is Muhammad.
And there's a reason for that.
The parents are making a point.
That they're choosing that name of all names.
It's not just any Arabic name.
So there's definitely just the numbers are growing.
And that's why when you look at certain areas in Europe, like in Sweden or in the UK, Germany, of course, France, you have what you're seeing, which is a lot of these Muslims are growing in numbers.
And Europeans are not replacing themselves, as we know.
There's a decline in the birth rate.
And if you look at certain polls, I remember a Pew one, I think it says in Germany something like by I mean, it's over.
Game over at that point.
If 20% is even enough, especially if you go back to the idea of all these cowardly people who think, you know, are making a virtue of advice by not resisting and not doing anything.
20% is plenty.
So, yeah, the jihad continues, you know, unabated, and it's taken different forms.
And now one of them, the main one, is this sort of baby demographic explosion.
And at the same time as that report...
And I think a lot of that is because modern-day Western Christianity is just not appealing.
It's become such an abstract idea.
You know, it's been stripped of everything, stripped of all sort of concrete.
You know, ritual is one aspect, but even more than ritual.
It's stripped of history.
And it's just an idea.
Oh, John 3.16, that's it.
And now I live my life like a secular person.
So no wonder churches are declining and falling away because we need a more robust historic form of Christianity.
That is what appealed to people.
That's what men fought and died for, as in those books, The Two Swords of Christ.
And they're not going to do it for, you know, what's now being paraded as Christianity, which is, as I said, just a mask for craven behavior, essentially.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
And I think that's the only thing that we're talking about And that's true whatever the religion is, right?
And this is one of the reasons that we find today this curious phenomenon that a false religion Let me just quote this thing here, because I have the figures right in front of me.
And this is the Washington Post.
It says that Christianity's share of world population decreased by 1.8 percentage points to 28.8%.
And it says here, I'm quoting the Washington Post, the fall off is driven in large part by disaffiliation.
I think Frank Walker and I, we could spend a whole hour talking over exactly what that means.
Okay, so I think that's really all we have time for.
Raymond Ibrahim, very, very honoured and grateful for you to come on the show today.
Just very briefly, where do people go to get not only the Two Swords of Christ, but the previous two books as well in the trilogy?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, thanks, Ben.
You can order it in a lot of places online, but the easiest place probably is Amazon.
They're all available.
Sword and Scimitar Defenders of the West.
The new book is actually not published yet, but you can pre-order it.
And like I said, and they all stand alone.
You don't have to read them to understand them, but they do complement each other because they're kind of different lens on different kind of aspects of the Crusades and these long wars with Islam.
But yeah, Amazon, you can probably order all of them right now.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
And on X?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, I'm on X, and I also start a new YouTube channel.
I invite everyone to check it out.
It's called the Holy War Channel, where I discuss all these topics and more, so that's fun too.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
What's your handle on X?
Where do people go?
raymond ibrahim ▲ ● ▼
Actually, the best place, just go to my website, RaymondIbrahim.com, and everything's there.
You'll find links to my ex, links to my Facebook, even though I'm shadow banned there, so even if you follow me there, and also to the YouTube stuff, as well as links to the books on Amazon.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Raymond Ibrahim, thank you very much for coming on the show.
We'll catch up again with you soon.
Frank Walker, where do people go to get your incredible Canon 212 output and your personal website?
What are the names there and your personal social media?
frank walker ▲ ● ▼
Just type it in, Canon 212, with 1-N-C-A-N-O-N-212, and bookmark it, and you can find me on X, Canon 212, all spelled out.
And you'll see the video at the Canon 212 site and also at Gloria TV.
And that's how you find me.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Frank, thanks very much.
And by the way, I just want to add, folks, that if you want to see any of the articles that we've referenced in today's show, Frank very kindly said that you can just go to Canon212 and he'll have the links there on his website.
So that's why.
Normally I point people to my hits on Rumble, but go to Frank's.
Canon 212 for the articles we've hit today.
Jenny, where do people go for your substack, for your presence on X, on social media?
jenny holland ▲ ● ▼
Jenny E. Holland dot substack.
And I'm Semper Femina 21 on X. Later today, actually, I'll be publishing a very short and very interesting essay about a Jesuit college in California in which a postgraduate course has truly unbelievable experiences.
So it's JennyEHolland.substack.
ben harnwell ▲ ● ▼
Jenny, thanks very much for coming on the show.
We'll catch up again with you next Wednesday.
Folks, thanks very much for tuning in.
I didn't have time to mention the story I wanted to do today, which is a piece in Associated Press that mentions what, of all things, the fact that they're looking towards Pope Leo to bring in the cash to save his increasingly illiquid church.
It's what we've been saying here on The Wallroom.
Thanks very much for tuning in.
Thanks for Denver and Cameron Wallace for putting the show together.
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