European Governments and other institutions are currently engaged in complex negotiations over the question of the accession of Turkey to the European Union. Many doubts and reservations on this matter have been raised in the past years. Those who support Turkey's joining the EU maintain that it would prove to be a natural ally of the West in the fight against Islamist Fundamentalism. However, Turkey today is no longer the lay country of Kemal Ataturk: with the 2002 elections, further confirmed by the 2004 elections, the "party of the veil" led by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the President Abdullah Gul, both with a proven background of radical Islamist fundamentalism, came into power. The Treaty of Lisbon stipulates that each State in the European Union has a political weight directly proportional to its demographics. Turkey, with its almost 85 millions inhabitants, would therefore be the most populated country and, as a consequence, the most represented in the European Parliament. While Europe is giving up on its Christian roots, Turkey exhibits an extremely well-defined and strong religious - political identity and its request to join the EU has not been put forward in order to renounce such identity, but, on the contrary, to impose it more widely. With or without Erdogan, Turkey would become the leader of the Islamic minority within the European institutions, where it will no doubt play a central role. So would the potential joining of Turkey be of benefit or, instead, an irreparable catastrophe for our Continent? This book poses the question and raises the alarm.

In these pages, Roberto de Mattei argues that "The best way to approach Islam is to respect it. And to respect it means to accept it for what it is, without 'reinterpreting' it and trying to make it what it is not." His is such a sensible approach that it unlikely to be taken up by our leaders, because to view Islam "as it really is" involves jettisoning illusions upon which our foreign policy has been built for decades. Our leaders suffer from a lack of understanding, a lack of imagination, and a lack of will. They are content to serve as justification for Robert Louis Stevenson's remark that man does not live by bread alone, but chiefly by catchwords. Their thinking is that, with catchwords, we can muddle along-and we can, for a while. The true catch is that, once that while is over, it may be too late to rectify things. -From the Foreword by Karl Keating, President of Catholic Answers