In the ongoing struggle between Islam and the West, one important fact is regularly overlooked:  one civilization has the will to triumph, but not the way; the other has the way to triumph, but not the will. 

Some who fear Islam do not seem to understand this.  They think that Islam is an irresistible force to be reckoned with; they see Muslim migrants as hordes of violent men invading Europe; they call on Western men to make a stand, resist the onslaught, save their women and children. 

To be sure, this portrayal is historically valid: for one thousand years, Muslims repeatedly invaded and conquered portions of Europe -- terrorizing, massacring, raping and enslaving in the name of Allah -- and were only repulsed by force of arms.

Today’s situation is far less dramatic and epic; it’s actually quite pathetic.  Muslim terrorists, rapists, and ISIS-sympathizers are not entering the West against its will but because of it.  In other words, the West is 100% responsible for this “invasion.” 

Consider it by analogy.  What if zoos began to maintain that it’s a slanderous stereotype to say that lions by nature prey on zebras?  Zoos start introducing lions into zebra enclosures.  The inevitable happens: although well fed, some lions continue chasing and mauling zebras.  Surely only a great fool would blame the ensuing carnage on lions -- who, after all, are merely being lions -- while ignoring those who insist on placing lions with zebras in the first place.

Similarly, those Western policy makers who continue insisting that Islam is peaceful (despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise), and that Muslim immigration is fine (despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise), are 100% to blame when Muslims terrorize, rape, and kill non-Muslims in the West -- that is, when they do what comes natural back home.

Still, Western politicians get away with warped policies because the general public -- including the average voter -- has been bred on warped views.  Thus, even as Germans were being overwhelmed by a million Muslim migrants, Dr. Stefanie von Berg, speaking before parliament, loudly proclaimed:

Mrs. President, ladies and gentlemen. Our society will change. Our city will change radically. I hold that in 20, 30 years there will no longer be a [German] majority in our city. …. And I want to make it very clear, especially towards those right wingers: This is a good thing!

Such suicidal words can be spoken and enacted only because voters have been conditioned to accept and support suicidal policies (which of course are dressed up to satisfy Western vanity). If they hadn’t, people like Berg, far from being elected to parliament, would be incarcerated for treason or committed into mental wards.

In the end, the relationship between Islam and the West is understood by the dichotomy of the will and the way.  The West has the way -- including the military and economic might -- to utterly neutralize Islam, one way or the other.  Yet it doesn’t even have the will to preserve itself.   Ban Islam’s presence from the West -- which is doable, provided the will is there -- and Islamic terrorism on Western soil ceases.  It’s that simple. 

Conversely, Islam most certainly has the will to eliminate the West, though it currently doesn’t have the way (minus those ways the West gives it).  Historically, for over one millennium, whenever Islam had the way, it always went on the offensive. 

Back then, when much of the world was limited to fighting with swords and spears, arrows and fire -- back when Islam was on an even footing with its neighbors -- untold millions of non-Muslims were slaughtered, enslaved, or converted to Islam.  This is seen in the historical fact that the overwhelming majority of territory that today constitutes the “Muslim world” was seized from non-Muslims by great violence and bloodshed.

Western military technology eventually progressed to the point that Islam was left in the dust.   Its will to dominate went dormant but remained intact. 

Put differently, if Islam was the one to develop sophisticated armaments and weapons of mass destruction, while the West was still using swords and spears, there would be no West to speak of today.  Faced before Islam’s three choices -- conversion, enslavement, or annihilation -- the West would’ve gone the way of the dodo, like many civilizations before it.

Yet here is the free and mighty West, refusing to use its powers -- even in the name of self-preservation -- while empowering an Islam that openly vows to, and will, subjugate the West, once the way to do so becomes available.  

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again, holds fellowships at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Middle East Forum.