…Pope Francis’ March visit to Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah al Sistani in the name of “co-existence” ignored Islam’s quest for religious dominance. The Vatican eases its advance with a newly launched ten-part webinar that recasts the mother of Jesus as “Mary, a Model of Faith for Christianity and Islam.”

Leading Islam-watcher William Kilpatrick warns against Christian credulity in illusions of multicultural harmony. He agreed to talk about misconceptions about the motivating tenets of this expansionist ideology.

Kilpatrick writes: “Historically, Christianity has been Europe’s strongest bulwark against Islamization. That heritage has been squandered to the point where it is almost lost.” His most recent book, What Catholics Need to Know About Islam, is an effort to reclaim that heritage….

Maureen Mullarkey: You write that Christians naively assume Muslims are allies against secularism and that Islamic family values and Christian family values are similar. Muslims oppose sexual permissiveness and other secularist enthusiasms. They uphold modesty, chastity, and piety. How do you explain the difference?

Kilpatrick: Christian family values have no substantial equivalent in traditional Islamic culture. Christian sexual norms and Christian emphasis on marital fidelity encourage respect for women. By contrast, Islamic sexual ethics devalue women. And this devaluation accounts for the high incidence of domestic violence in traditional Muslim households.

First among “family values” is male honor—an honor which largely depends on a man’s ability to control the women in his life. A wife or daughter who might jeopardize the honor of husband, father, or brother, risks severe punishment, even death.

A Muslim male’s control over women extends beyond honor killings to female genital mutilation, a cruelty designed to depress libido and safeguard virginity. Other practices—forced marriage, child marriage, temporary marriage, polygamy, wife-beating, and easy divorce (for men) are part of the warp and woof of Islamic society. The prevalence of these practices belies the notion that Christians and Muslims share similar family values.

MM: In 2017, the German parliament voted for same-sex marriage. All six Muslim members of Bundestag also voted in favor of the “marriage for all” measure. Does this not demonstrate that Muslims can assimilate into Western culture and adapt to its ideas of equality?

Kilpatrick: No, it doesn’t. Not if you consider the Muslim vote as a tactical measure. The vote for same-sex marriage opens a door to polygamy by dismantling the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage as a bond between one man and one woman.

The Muslim members’ vote can be seen as a covert step toward legitimizing sharia and, simultaneously, undermining a key cultural institution. Like same-sex marriage, polygamy is a destabilizing force in Western society. And destabilization—of family structure and economy—is a weapon in an incremental culture war. It serves the aims of jihad by weakening Western culture from within….

William Kilpatrick is the author of several books about Islam including Christianity, Islam, and Atheism, and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad. His work is supported in part by the Shillman Foundation.

The above comes from a March 22 story on The Federalist.