ANALYSIS – While many of us recently celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ, also known as the ‘Prince of Peace,’ 2023 brings a year of danger and turmoil, with multiple regional flash points that could lead to a major war.

But longer term, another global danger is brewing, more slowly, but inexorably.

This danger is mostly political, ideological, and religious.

And while it may take a couple of more decades to come to pass, this steady shift will have profound historic repercussions and will change the world mostly for the worse.

I am talking about the steady death of Christianity in the U.S. and Europe, and the global growth and potential dominance of Islam in large parts of the world. 

And this future looks bleak.

Symbolically, as we just celebrated Christmas, let’s begin with the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. It is built above the site where Jesus was reportedly born on the West Bank of the Palestinian territories.

It still broadcasts beautiful Christmas Eve services worldwide on TV.

However, most who watched the service on TV aren’t aware that the Christian population of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christianity, has been decimated under Muslim rule.

It has plummeted from 85% in 1947 to 15% today.

Christians worldwide aren’t faring too much better.

There are now 2.2 billion Christians in the world, at least nominally. But Islam has 1.97 billion followers, and rising. 

And Islam is growing in two ways – it is advancing by the sword and the cradle. 

Islamist extremist violence, terrorism, insurgency, and war, which in a major victory just recaptured Afghanistan, is spreading extremist Islam from the Middle East to Africa at a rapid pace.

Meanwhile, combined with the militant spread, a higher global Muslim fertility rate (2.9 children per woman, versus 2.6 for the rest of the world), means that by 2075, Islam will be the world’s dominant religion.

And where Islam is dominant as a religion it is also dominant politically and legally, as the Prophet Mohammed prescribed.

Of course, Islamist apologists, and Christian-hating leftists, will immediately denounce any criticism of Islam as racist or ‘Islamophobic.’ 

So let me quickly note that hundreds of thousands of Christian American soldiers have fought, and died, on multiple battlefields to defend Muslims, everywhere from Bosnia to Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, and even Africa.

I personally served as a Marine Corps officer and military attache’ in Arab Muslim countries as well as in Bosnia where we were protecting Muslims.

I also spent many long days and nights during several months last year, remotely from Washington, DC trying to save hundreds, if not thousands of our Muslim brothers and sisters abandoned in Afghanistan by Joe Biden.

I also did what I could to help these worthy allies come and relocate to the U.S. when possible.

I did this due to my Christian values, my family’s experience being abandoned by another Democratic administration in another previously allied country (JFK and Cuba), as much as my sense of patriotic duty.

Sadly, we likely will never see the actions on a similar scale in reverse.

But the issue is far beyond whether individual Muslims are good, Christians are bad, or vice versa. The issue is what a world dominated by Muslim values, politics, and law – versus one which has been dominated by Christianity – will look like.

And based on what we see in too many Islamic-led countries today, that future will be far worse than what we have now.

Most, if not all, of our western liberal values the left hold so dear, and so do many conservatives, originate directly from Christianity, and indirectly from Judaism. 

Yes, Christianity, when wrongly wedded to the state during the Middle Ages, was often used by ruthless monarchs to justify war and intolerance.

But that history is long gone, along with the politically powerful royal families of Europe.

Since at least the reformation, Christianity, including my own Catholic Church, has been free of the state and has been (even if imperfectly) a bulwark of tolerance, peace, and positive social change.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of Islam.

Though many call Islam a religion of peace, Islam literally means submission, and bloody jihad has been integral to its core since Mohammed. 

And except when it has been effectively contained by the West, Islam has been an aggressive militant force.

And while Christianity during the past few centuries has firmly returned to its peaceful, almost pacifist, roots of Christ, its founder, Islam struggles with the fact that at its core and founding, Islam is violent and intolerant.

As was Mohammed – Islam’s founder – the warrior prophet.

And whereas in the West we have the separation of church and state, based in part on Jesus’ teaching of ‘give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s,’ in Islam it’s the opposite.

There is no similar separation in Islamic tradition. Islam is as much a political ideology and legal structure as it is a religion. 

And though the vast majority of individual Muslims are good, peaceful, tolerant, and loving people, Islam itself allows for officially sanctioned violence and intolerance. 

It all too often even rewards it.

And this is why to this day, a small but significant minority of Muslims openly support violence.

As Boston Herald columnist Don Feder writes in the Washington Times:

…worldwide, 8% of Muslims say suicide bombings are “sometimes” or “often” justified in the name of Islam. That 8% may not seem like much, but it means more than 100 million condone coldblooded murder to defend perceived attacks on Islam.

Feder adds: “Even in the West, many Muslims want to live under Islamic law (Sharia), where adulterers are stoned to death and converts to other faiths are murdered.”

To be more precise he notes: “In Russia, where Islam is expected to be the largest religion by 2050, 42% of Muslims support Sharia, as do 71% in Nigeria, 46% in France and 40% in the United Kingdom.”

Feder continues:

While Muslims in the West demand tolerance, Christians rarely get it under Islam. In Egypt, Coptic churches are bombed, congregants shot, and girls kidnapped and forced to convert. All over the Middle East, ancient communities have been uprooted.

Meanwhile, half the population growth worldwide between now and 2050 will be concentrated in Africa, including Congo, Nigeria, and Tanzania. 

The growth there is much more by the sword than the cradle, as all these countries have active violent Islamist insurgencies.

In Europe it is the opposite. Europeans are simply dying off by choice, and being replaced, often by Muslims.

Feder explains:

…the European fertility rate is 1.49, well below the replacement level of 2.1. Europe lost 1.1 million people last year. That’s the first rumbling of a coming earthquake. The fertility rate for European Muslims is 2.54. You don’t need to be a statistician to see which way the demographic winds are blowing.

It’s estimated that by 2085, 13 European countries will have Muslim majorities — this in a continent once known as Christendom. Christians are writing their own obituary by failing to heed the commandment to be fruitful and multiply.

And while in the United States, Islam has not yet become big enough to endanger our liberal western culture and legal system, there have been rumblings and testing of our resolve. 

This usually occurs at the local level where Muslims may dominate, and opportunistic ‘civic’ leaders may use that as leverage to try to force change in their favor.

However, the bigger threat in America is simply the loss of Christianity. And the moral and spiritual vacuum that this is creating. 

Christianity, the former bedrock of American society and the system it was built on, has rapidly declined in the U.S. from 91% as recently as 1976 to 73.7% in 2016, to 64% in 2022.

A third of the clueless Generation Z (or ‘Zoomers’) say they are unaffiliated with any religion or denomination.

According to a recent Pew Research study, Christians will be a minority of 47% in this country by 2050.

So, a belated Merry Christmas to all. We won’t be celebrating it as much in the not-too-distant future.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.