Churchhill’s 1899 book The River War

In it he writes about Islam.

He wrote in one section:

“Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.”

“Hydrophobia” was the contemporary term for rabies.

The larger passage begins:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!”

He then sharply criticized what he regarded as religious fanaticism and social stagnation, eventually writing:

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.”

He also described Islam (“Mohammedanism,” in the terminology of his era) as a “militant and proselytizing faith.”

So to paraphrase what he said into today’s more modern observation, essentially what Churchill said was ‘Radical Islam is the spiritual equivalent of rabies in a dog.’