Islamicized Europe May Be Ripe for Revival

What if, in the grim news of the Islamization of Europe, God has been setting the stage for one of the greatest harvests of souls the world has ever seen?

I know I spend too much time reading posts on “X.” I do have the excuse that I write about politics, religion, and culture for a living. I try to avoid the sterile “gotcha” debates, the catfights between terminally online “influencers” and rageposters, and the obvious sinkholes of clickbait. (Think of posts such as, “If you love Jesus, you’ll retweet this AI image of Him as a bodybuilder.”)

Since I follow a lot of interesting people, I often come across posts that provoke further thought, or remind me of questions I’d mulled over in the past, then forgotten about in the press of oncoming current events. Here’s one of them:

The Christianization of Muslims in the West should be a priority. The alternative is the Islamization of the West, which will only bring death and suffering to everyone. Secularism is not good enough.

— Ridvan Aydemir | Apostate Prophet (@ApostateProphet) April 23, 2025

I don’t know who Ridvan Ayedmir is, or what “apostate prophet” is meant to mean. But his is a thought that I’ve had before in the past, even elaborated in my mind, and never written about. I think it’s time.

But let’s think it all through from Heaven’s perspective, not Earth’s.

The Unmeltable Migrants in Europe’s Tepid Pot

Western Europe’s politicians allowed their countries to be flooded with tens of millions of Muslims, who left their chaotic home countries in search of material comfort. Maybe the first generations of migrants were relieved to leave behind war-torn Beirut or despotic Damascus, and were grateful to Germany or Britain for accepting them.

But their children were different. Because they’d entered countries with thousand-year histories and thick, inherited cultures, they found that they didn’t fit in. Instead, they clustered in subcultures, stewed on public assistance, and found community in mosques far more radical than the ones their parents had left behind.

Newcomers from Pakistan or Sudan might find a place in the watered-down culture that has prevailed in the U.S. since the 1965 immigration law threw open our gates to the whole Third World. Since the 1920s, our elites have redefined America first as a melting pot, then as a minestrone. Even patriotic Americans suspicious of mass immigration believe that Muslims who come here can and should assimilate — given that becoming “American” has sadly been redefined by the lowest common denominator: Don’t be a terrorist. Pay your taxes. Obey the law. We don’t ask much more than that — but we frequently don’t even get that. Muslims right here in my own state of Texas are trying to build a sharia city, with corrupt Republicans helping them every step of the way and Democrats winking at cultural practices they’d condemn if Christians tried them.

“Becoming” a Frenchman or an Englishman or a German is something else entirely. And it’s arguably impossible for Algerians, Afghans, and Turks, even if they wished to do it. Instead we have historic European cities with foreign, “no-go” zones where alien languages, clothes, and religion reigns supreme. The Muslims ally with the local leftist parties, since they share a common enemy: patriotic and Christian citizens. The Muslims disdain us as “infidels,” the leftists hate us as “fascists,” and this political coalition manages to hold onto power and accelerate the colonization of each country. Even when voters rebel, as they tried to in Romania and France, the elites use their control over legal institutions and the media to censor and even outlaw the patriotic opposition.

It’s a recipe for civil war, and for a decade I’ve thought such a war was completely unavoidable. Given that, I concluded, the sooner it breaks out, the better our odds — the better the chances for the natives and Christians to prevail over the colonizers and their allied traitor elites. These are bleak thoughts I don’t like to dwell on.

But there’s another way to see it.

The Barbarians Proved to Be the Future of the Church

Of course I believe that European countries should halt all Muslim immigration, and take active steps to encourage re-migration by as many Muslims who are willing to leave peaceably. But given the willingness of leftist Eurocrats to imprison political opponents such as France’s Marine Le Pen, and the glee with which Britain’s government locks up native-born Britons for posting mild complaints about Muslim rape gangs on Facebook, how politically likely is such an outcome?

We must think of backup strategies, and I don’t mean civil war. Considering Christian history ought to give us glimmers of hope and possible strategies for action as the Holy Spirit guides us, according to His own purposes.

When the converted, Christianized Western Roman empire finally crumbled under the weight of barbarian mass migration, it seemed like the end of the world. Literally. Some Christian thinkers were sure that the Apocalypse had arrived. St. Augustine wrote The City of God to counter pagan critics who blamed the Church for Rome’s collapse, and the “end of civilization,” and he died with his home city under barbarian seige. Christian soldiers fought energetically to keep out such foreign invaders, proving that pacifism was no part of the Gospel.

But nothing availed. The pressure of mass migration proved too much for Rome’s legions and institutions to hold back, and the whole empire was flooded with Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Franks, Vandals, and others.

The Church Didn’t Close Up Shop

But did the Church close down and go home, retreating to Byzantium or Jerusalem? Quite the contrary. Bishops, monks, and other evangelists forged into the strongholds of the new barbarian kingdoms to preach. They founded monasteries in the wilderness, which served as centers of missionary work. They boldly confronted barbarian kings and called their pagan gods false. Many paid with their lives for such boldness.

And within a few hundred years, those regions once lost to “barbarians” were fully Christianized. Their kings begged for Latin teachers, and minted coins that looked almost Roman. Soon tribes such as the Franks were warlords fighting against Muslim invaders, preserving much of the Roman culture, and adhering to a church centered in Rome.

Could all that happen again, albeit in some other form?

Knowing how God brings good out of evil, perhaps it already is. On this subject, as on so many others, the problem is at its root spiritual, not material. The Enemy always overplays his hand, and God, as Master Strategist lets him. (Think of Good Friday.) He hides his greatest victories in the clothing of the Cross. Is He preparing us even now for a Christian resurgence in Europe, among the very people who today dream of Sharia?

What We Can Do

By all means, go on supporting patriotic politics and fighting for border control. Christian duty doesn’t negate civic duty; it includes it. But what if Christians accompanied all that with a vigorous outreach to evangelize the Muslims already in their countries? In medieval France, St. Dominic founded his Order of Preachers specifically to counter the influence of Albigensian gnostics. Where is the religious order aimed at converting Muslims? How many churches of any denomination devote special ministries to reaching out to Muslims, offering them the full truth of the Gospel?

To do so would require special preparation: fluency in Arabic and deep study in Muslim doctrines, along with the cogent critiques of Muhammad’s claims that Christians have produced over the centuries. Some online apologists have made a start, such as David Wood’s Apologetics Roadshow. The Stream‘s longtime contributor Raymond Ibrahim conducts his critiques of Islam in defense of his own Christian faith and persecuted Coptic community. See his latest deep dive into the dark, unspoken side of Islam here:

We need many more evangelists willing to undertake this work.

Far too many Muslims who become disillusioned with that faith’s anti-rational, violent core end up as atheists. The very idea of “God” is tainted for them by the grim specter of Islam’s capricious Allah. One happy exception is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who traveled through the wasteland of the New Atheism to finally find Christ. Another was the late Nabeel Qureshi. For decades, our Charismatic cousins have prophesied that before Jesus returns, there would be a “billion-soul harvest,” and some say it’s already underway; over the past few years, Christ for All Nations says there have been some 97 million decisions for Christ, many of them among Muslims.

What if we started seeing Muslims not merely as geopolitical threats, but souls which thirst for the Living Water? That seems like the attitude of apostles.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.