26. Secularism or Islamism, Two Nightmares?

The idea of an ideal world comes from the Christian idea of the salvation of the world. Al-Massih, as we have explained, has achieved the salvation of the world by his victory over Shaytan obtained at the time of the Passion. This salvation has unhappily been rejected by one part of humanity, so in order that the world in its entirety may be saved, we must now await the manifestation of the Antichrist, Ad-Dajjal, then the glorious Coming of Christ who will purify the world of the Antichrist and of his supporters [1].

The ideal world will not be realized then but through the eschatological judgment which will be the work of Al-Massih. While we wait, the harm done by Antichrist (the impostor Messiah) will depend on the obstacles he meets. It is important that the just resist him, all the while preparing the kingdom which will issue from the glorious manifestation of Christ.

We can signal here that during the centuries, what we derived from Augustinism prevented Christians from announcing the true hope for the world and also from dialoguing with Muslims on the theme of the eschatological hope - for the world.

Those who reject the salvation of Al-Massih have kept the idea of the salvation of the world, or of an ideal world, but have charged themselves with the execution of the judgment of the world. The massacres perpetrated are an act of judgment from which it is expected an ideal world will emerge, liberated or submitted, but pure and perfect. (Unless that in a satanic nihilism we have no hope at all remaining).

We find this idea in the secularism of the French Revolution where the revolutionaries massacred refractories in the illusory hope of a liberated world. We find it again in the ideal of the Soviet conquest of the world by the Socialist International.

Islamist thought also aims at massacring the unsubmitted in view of an ideal world “submitted” to the same logic (which would explain why global secularist movements are sometimes the first to finance these Islamic movements).This thought is expressed in numerous hadiths of the Muslim tradition, but as it involves armed combat, these writings circulate in a rather private, non-official way: Muslim governments, conscious of the subversive charge against these traditions do not favor their exposition to the full light of day. In effect, on the basis of such a belief, the least preaching or media campaign defining “the forces of Evil to combat” is capable of drawing believers in enormous combats. And all manipulations are possible.