In the August 16 edition of his daily BreakPoint radio commentary, Prison Fellowship Ministries founder and convicted Watergate felon Charles W. Colson suggested that America and “the West” were inflaming radical Islam through “our decadence.” Colson described a visit to the United States by the man believed to be Osama bin Laden's intellectual inspiration, Egyptian polemicist Sayyid Qutb, a man “who knew what he was talking about,” according to Colson.

As Media Matters for America has previously noted, Colson's website claims that BreakPoint is broadcast on more than 1,000 stations to an estimated audience of 1 million listeners.

According to Colson:

There was a brilliant but paranoid Egyptian writer by the name of Sayyid Qutb, imprisoned in Egypt in 1956. In 1970, he published a book, In the Shade of the Koran, attacking the West as totally corrupt. Qutb knew what he was talking about. He lived in the United States for a time and saw our decadence.

Colson went on to acknowledge Qutb's influence on bin Laden's radicalization, noting that Qutb's brother “escaped Egypt, went to Saudi Arabia, and became a professor at the university. One of his star pupils was none other than Osama bin Laden.”

Colson's recent editorial was a slight variation on a theme he introduced in an August 2004 Christianity Today article he co-authored with BreakPoint senior writer Anne Morse . In the article, titled "The Moral Homefront," Colson and Morse claimed that the failure of Congress to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, was “like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America's decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers.” Colson and Morse added:

Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us. We must not give up simply because the Senate voted down the FMA. It took William Wilberforce and his allies 20 years to shut down Britain's slave trade; it will take years to win the battle for traditional marriage.

The lessons of history are a warning that the church must not fail to engage these moral battles. Comparing U.S. decadence to the fall of Rome is an old chestnut that culture warriors have used for years. In the past, I dismissed such comparisons because of America's enormous economic and military strength. But the tactics of terrorists changed that equation.

Recall that Rome's destruction came about not only through its decadence, but because the Rhine River froze, allowing barbarians to cross into Roman territory. America is vulnerable not only through its decadence, but because the vast oceans that once protected her from enemies protect her no more.

This makes reversing U.S. decadence an urgent priority, not just for Christians, but for all Americans. If our cultural rot continues unabated, a Talibanized West may no longer be a joke, but grim reality.

From Colson's August 16 BreakPoint commentary, “Revisiting the Radical Islamic Worldview”:

COLSON: During the Cold War, there was a great clash of civilizations -- communism vs. Western liberal democracy. And it threatened to destroy us in a nuclear holocaust. I was in the White House during those years. I can tell you, it was terrifying getting those daily briefings from the military. But the danger that we face from radical Islam today is even greater than the Cold War.

In the mid-1990s, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington predicted that the 21st century would see a great clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Nobody paid much attention. After all, we had just defeated communism. There was peace in the world. All was well.

Then came 9-11, when we awoke to the fact that there are people out there who want to destroy us -- not just defeat us, but annihilate us.

Why? There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the West about why they hate us. “Maybe if we just got out of the Middle East,” some say, “or elected a new government, or abandoned the war on terror, maybe they would change their minds.” Well, what the pundits don't realize is that this is a clash of civilizations. Armies of suicide bombers ought to tell us that their worldview matters more to them than life itself.

The hard truth is that members of Islam's radical branches have no interest in coming to terms with non-Muslims, or even moderate Muslims. To put it bluntly, they don't care whether we're nice or not. To this breed of radical Muslims, there are only two options: convert or die.

Does that sound drastic? Sure. But it's a fact.

The history of Islamic hostility toward the West goes back centuries. Radical Muslims are still smarting over the defeat of their armies south of Paris in the year of 732, not to mention the catastrophic defeat of the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna on September 11, 1683. That's right, September 11. Bin Laden chose his date for a reason. He was avenging the defeat of Muslim armies more than four hundred years earlier. Nine-11 has roots in an irrational hatred of the West.

There was a brilliant but paranoid Egyptian writer by the name of Sayyid Qutb, imprisoned in Egypt in 1956. In 1970, he published a book, In the Shade of the Koran, attacking the West as totally corrupt. Qutb knew what he was talking about. He lived in the U.S. for a time and saw our decadence. He also read Western philosophers like [Martin] Heidegger and [Jacques] Derrida and other intellectuals who hated the West. And he read all the anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic literature.

Qutb's In the Shade of the Koran unequivocally advocates killing of “infidels.” He was executed by the Egyptian government, but his brother, Muhammad Qutb, escaped Egypt, went to Saudi Arabia, and became a professor at the university. One of his star pupils: none other than Osama bin Laden. Don't tell me worldviews don't matter. This same worldview now influences millions of radical Muslims -- up to 10 percent, according to some accounts, 100 million. What we're seeing in the Middle East today aren't isolated acts of terrorism, but a widespread, well-organized, hatred-fueled movement.

Now, politicians don't like to say politically incorrect things like this, but it's true. We in the West had better understand we are in a life-and-death struggle with a worldview that wants to destroy us. To see anything else would be tragically blind.