Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action

The Real Battleground with Jihadism George Weigel correctly locates our civilization's real battle with Jihadism's attempting to destroy our nation and other nations. The battleground is in our contrasting theological concepts and the resulting actions and emotions. Jihadists view God as being remote and requiring total submission, versus Christians' view of God as our loving heavenly Father who sent his Son. These contrasting views are contained in the history and the documents of the two faiths, the Qur'an (Koran) for Islam considered to be dictated directly, word by word to one person in about 600 AD in Arabic and so not to be translated, whereas the Bible had many writers over many years, who are believed by ecclesiastical consensus to have been directly inspired by God, but who actually used the words and language of the writers' own particular historic period to document that inspiration for all. The many confrontations with Jihadism are best understood in the context of this deep, long-term theological battle noted above. Even secular leaders and individual atheists should accept and utilize the reality of this real theological battle in their understanding and actions to be effective. Defense against the Jihadists avowed intention of eliminating non-Moslems and their culture can not be achieved by way of our military power and economic resources, as continually demonstrated by recent events. The reason for this impasse is because the battle between Jihadists and the rest of the world is asymmetric, and as per Weigel observation really theological. Minimizing the Jihadists threat to our lives and culture will not be achieved by accommodating to their complaints against western culture, as is frequently done now, since that accommodation is regarded by them as just us acknowledging our failing and weakness with regard to Islam. We must stand firm in the applications of the rule of law, freedom in individual conscience, and social structures that are built on our Judeo-Christian history and scriptures which preceded Islam many centuries. Weigel documents how Islam's interpretation of this prior common history/heritage is very distorted by them, even wrong. Weigel says that majority Moslem's within their own culture must work-around and then deny the Jihadists' cults for destruction for non-Moslems to truly join our global, pluralistic, contemporary world. Islam's own history of past success can serve as a basis for this correction. We of the Judeo-Christian heritage and persons of other religions must facilitate this possible transition by our frank and frequent public words both about history and contemporary concerns, plus our continued examples of social, political and material success. We must also show patience during the process of the Moslem main-stream's denying the Jihadists' their destructive positions toward themselves and the world.

George Weigel sees a problem with the War on Terror as we are currently conducting it. Too many people in the United States and Europe (especially the leaders) fail to understand the true motives and ideas that drive the jihadists and this leads us to make tactical mistakes. George Weigel has written this book in an attempt to help us understand what the War on Terror is really all about and how we can win it. There are fifteen chapters in the book with each one dedicated to a single lesson that the West must learn if we are to successfully defeat the jihadists. These fifteen chapters are divided into three parts: Understanding the Enemy, Rethinking Realism, and Deserving Victory. Weigel's prose in clear as usual and in each chapter the reader is treated to a thoughtful blend of philosophy, political theory, and politics. There are a handful of problems with the book (e.g. his creation of the "unhinged right" seems like an artificial and weak construction thrown in just to provide political balance to his "unhinged left") but overall the book is a useful guide to understanding the struggle America must face if we are to prevail in the War on Terror. Everyone in America who is unsure about the nature and desires of our enemies should read this book.

For people who have read Bernard Lewis, Victor Davis Hanson, and Robert Spencer, they might ask what does George Weigel have to say that hasn't already been said? The answer is "a great deal". This is a book that is helpful in identifying what parts of the conventional wisdom are wrong and why. It is logically organized into "lessons" (1) The great human questions, include the great questions of public life are ultimately theological. (These lessons are not assumed but explained and carefully argued). (10) In the war against global jihadism, deterrence strategies are unlikely to be effective, because is almost impossible to deter those who are committed to their own martyrdom. (14) Victory in the war against global jihadism requires a new domestic political coalition that is proof against the confusions caused by the Unhinged Left and the Unhinged Right. It is up to the United States to defend the West, and every American voter should be educated by this book and how it can be done.

This book should be required reading for all of the presidential candidates. In this short book, able to be completed in one sitting if you're diligent, Weigel accurately describes the roots of the present war against jihadism. During this crucial election year, this book helps to frame the issue that should be at the core of the decision-making process for all voters. Buy this book, give it away to your friends and request that your local library buys a copy. I can not overstate the importance of this little book.

I recently read Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action by the Pope's biographer George Weigel which will go on sale on Dec 26 of this year. George Weigel is certainly in the camp of those who think the Iraq War is just, but this book is not about the defense of this. Just war theory is hardly brought up and the discussion on Iraq and is mainly focused on just how badly the administration messed up post-war planning, that is if they had any real planning to deal with the situation in the first place. There is good reason that George Weigel throughout the book refers to the Pope's Regensburg address that caused so much controversy, but for the wrong reasons. The Pope's address is almost a blueprint for this book and Weigel's contention that Jihadism is primarily caused by bad theology due to false idea that God is not even bound to reason. The Pope's critique was also focused on the Western world where there has been a loss of faith in reason and the ability to know what is true resulting in a deep and blinding skepticism. Reading this book really helped me to focus and think about the problems of global Jihadism and how best to respond to it. In the West the idea of Jihad terrorism is mainly seen as a problem due to root causes such as poverty and other environmental factors. It is easy to understand this worldview since it results from a worldview that already does not take theology seriously in the first place. They can't see that other might take theology (no matter how badly distorted) seriously. George Weigel lays out many factors in the Islamic culture that leads to Jihadism in the first part of the book called "Understanding the enemy." These factors are not going to be solved by reducing poverty in parts of the Middle East or by retreating back to our borders and having a foreign policy that just looks on at the rest of the world. I always found it rather silly to think that it was America helping out Muslims in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, etc as being a major rallying call against the United States. Israel is a bone of contention, but it is not just the U.S. that is supporting Israel. It is the view that Islam cannot fail and see history through this lens. The sections of Weigel's book are divided as lessons and the title of one lesson is "Jihadists read history and politics through their prism of their distinctive theological convictions, not through the lens of western assumptions of the progressive dynamic of history." Islamists see the stagnation of their culture and look for who to blame for it. The number of patents coming from predominantly Islamic cultures is so small that it hardly registers compared to countries like the United States, and in Asia and Europe. Part of the Islamist's critique of the Western world and its decadence is certainly true, but there response is even more evil than what they are suppose to be offended at. This produces the ironies such as the 9/11 hijackers visiting strip clubs