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

by George Weigel

“History must be made to march in the direction of genuine human progress; world affairs have no intrinsic momentum that necessarily results in the victory of decency. Maintaining the morale necessary to achieving progress in history requires us to live our lives, today, against a moral horizon of responsibility that is wider and deeper than the quest for personal satisfactions. The future of our civilization does not rest merely on the advance of material wealth and technological prowess; the future of the West turns on the question of whether our spiritual aspirations are noble or base.”
—from Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism

More than half a decade after 9/11, safe passage through a moment of history fraught with both peril and possibility requires Americans across the political spectrum to see things as they are.

In this incisive, engaging study of the present danger and what we must do to prevail against it, George Weigel, one of America’s foremost public intellectuals, does precisely he sees, and describes, things as they are—and as they might be. Drawing on a quarter century of experience at the intersection of moral argument and public policy, he describes rigorously and clearly the threat posed by global the religiously inspired ideology which teaches that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to employ whatever means are necessary to compel the world’s submission to Islam. Exploring that ideology’s theological, social, cultural, and political roots, Weigel points a new direction for both public policy and interreligious dialogue, one that meets the challenge of jihadism forthrightly while creating the conditions for a less threatening, more mutually enriching encounter between Islam and the West.

Essential reading in a time of momentous political decisions, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism is a clarion call for a new seriousness of debate and a new clarity of purpose in American public life.

Genres: Religion, Islam, Terrorism, Nonfiction, Christianity, Politics, Faith

208 pages, Hardcover

First published December 26, 2007

About the author

American author and political and social activist. Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Weigel was the Founding President of the James Madison Foundation.

Each summer, Weigel and several other Catholic intellectuals from the United States, Poland, and across Europe conduct the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society in Krakow, in which they and an assortment of students from the United States, Poland, and several other emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe discuss Christianity within the context of liberal democracy and capitalism, with the papal encyclical Centesimus Annus being the focal point.

He is a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Reviews

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good look at the problems we are up against. Weigel does a great job breaking it all down in just a few pages. He also offers a plan for victory. Very good book. Here is an amazing quote that will give some insights into Weigel's argument: In discussing Islam, he writes that "But wherever we locate the origin of the inertia, Islamic religious authorities eventually became nervous about such philosophical speculations; and that nervousness, combined with Islam's traditional sense of self-sufficiency (as well as its disdain for the achievements of the infidel world), created a cultural situation that eventually led to a deterioration of intellectual vitality. As Bernard Lewis writes, 'The Renaissance, the Reformation, the scientific revolution, and the Enlightenment...passed without effect in the Islamic world, without even being noticed.' Over time, that pattern of intellectual stagnation in Islam would yield drastic results. Thus in 2002, a study of 'Arab Human Development,' organized by Arab intellectuals and published under the auspices of the United Nations, found that 'the Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece translates. The accumulative total of translated books (into Arabic) since the 9th century is about 100,000.' More books are translated into Spanish in an average decade than have been translated into Arabic in a millennium." Can you believe that! How do you reason with a culture that has skipped out on the Enlightenment? Doesn't this mean that you have to re-write our entire diplomatic playbook? Very interesting. How about the books? An entire portion of the world only translating one-fifth of what the Greeks translate. Shocking.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a long time admirer of George Weigel, and have been following many of his insightful articles in "First Things" and "Commentary," and hence I was very excited to get a hold of his latest book "Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism." From his earlier works like "The Cube and the Cathedral" I have come to expect a highly critical and well argued, incisive, prose and this book does not disappoint. The arguments and the prose in this latest book have been streamlined, each one of the points that Weigel is trying to get across gets its own chapter, and the proposed action plan is likewise precisely delineated. The points that Weigel is making are broken down in 15 "lessons" which are:

1. The great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological.
2. To speak of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as "three Abrahamic faiths," "the three religions of the Book," or the "three monotheism" obscures rather than illuminates. These familiar tropes ought to be retired.
3. Jihadims is the enemy in the multifront war that has been declared upon us.
4. Jihadism has a complex intellectual history, the chief points of which must be grasped in order to understand the nature of the threat it poses to the West.
5. Jihadists read history and politics through the prism of their own theological convictions, not through the lens of western assumptions about the progressive dynamic of history.
6. It is not "Islamophobic" to note the historical connection between conquest and Muslim expansion, or between contemporary Jihadism and terrorism. Truth-telling is the essential prerequisite to genuine interreligious dialogue, which can only be based on the claims of reason.
7. The war against jihadism is a contest for human future that will endure for generations.
8. Genuine realism in foreign policy takes wickedness seriously, yet avoids premature closure in its thinking about the possibilities of positive change in world politics.
9. In the war against jihadism, the political objective in the Middle East and throughout the Islamic world is the evolution of responsible and responsive government, which will take different forms given different historical and cultural circumstances.
10. In the war against global jihadism, deterrence strategies are unlikely to be effective, because it is almost impossible to deter those who are committed to their own martyrdom.
11. Cultural self-confidence is indispensible to victory in the long-term struggle against jihadism.
12. Islamist salami tactics must be resisted, for small concessions in the name of a false idea of tolerance inevitable lead to further concessions, and then to further erosion of liberty and society.
13. We cannot, and will not, deserve victory (much less achieve it) if we continue to finance those who attack us. Therefore, a program to defund jihadism by developing alternatives to petroleum-based transportation fuels is a crucial component of the current struggle.
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.
15. There is no escape from U.S. leadership.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very good read; it is not dated by any means, but given the continuing turmoil in the world, and the continuation of Islamically-inspired violence in particular, the book is well worth reading. Weigel is at his best when addressing issues from an intellectual standpoint, calling for a review of our current way of framing problems and solutions, and offering practical advise for our modern philosophy. Where Weigel gets a bit tangled up is when he proceeds to more hands-on, practical steps. His heart and mind both seem to be in the right place, but the details of some of his proposals seem to bedevil him. His grasp of free market concepts is loose at best. He suggests tolerance, but at the same time, he shows an intolerance in some areas owing to his own faith.

While some may think Weigel "right wing" or "conservative" at the outset, he is quite objective and fair, sparing no one from righteous criticism. While he has no apology for the Iraq War in principle, for instance, he engages in a lively criticism of its handling. He does not delve deeply into Islam as a topic, and those seeking a general understanding of it will have to seek it elsewhere; luckily, Weigel well-annotates his work and one can use his bibliography as a great starting place. His view on Islam is very nuanced, and he focuses chiefly on the jihadist elements within it (hence the title).

Among his most beneficial points were his psychological insights (the resistance of people to facts that make them uncomfortable), his criticism of Western secularism (the inability of some secularists to see the continuing relevance and power of religion in the lives of many, including in the West), and the power of ideas and the importance of harnessing Western liberal ideas and culture to defeat the violence and intolerance preached by jihadist Islam. He does give a good, if cursory, review of Islam's difficulty in adopting modern liberal ideas, but he carefully avoids painting with too broad a brush. He presents a balanced view of necessary assimilation in terms of Western countries coming to terms with their immigrant populations. His more practical proposals include an avoidance of self-loathing in the West, leading to cultural collapse; commitment to liberal values; understanding the impossibility of deterring jihadists; and vastly reducing dependence on petroleum from Middle Eastern countries (I would prefer to see that expanded to energy sources in any totalitarian regime, to include Russia and Venezuela, but that would exceed the bounds of this short, tightly-written work).

One quick note about the Kindle edition. It appears to have been scanned in from hard copy rather than produced from the original soft copy source. Not only are there hyphens between syllables (not needed on a Kindle), but often "K" is scanned in as "R," and other similar such errors.

The book is short, well-written, and easy to read. I would recommend it for anyone who cares about the present and future, though of course I would advise the reader to test each one of Weigel's ideas for its merits.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is intended for someone who is very well educated (a lot more than me) and extremely knowledgeable in the subjects of religion and international affairs, in particular. The author takes a very harsh stance against jihadists, and muslims in general. A lot of his points make sense, but in a lot of ways many of them do not have a practical application.
Regardless, it was well written, very well researched, and very interesting.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a startlingly important and thought-provoking book without easy or expected answers, but filled with carefully considered scenario and what it means in our day to act out Christian principles while being generous yet circumspect about other political and religious persuasions. It is an apologist's treatise on how we generally think about the Abrahamic faiths, and why we should think deeper than that.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good and necessary book. Perhaps a bit dated. I would be interested to know how the situation in the Middle East has changed with the Arab Springs. I found his Lesson 13 out of nowhere and my entire discussion group agreed that it was rather badly thought through.
A bit dated, a bit naive, this book ultimately has many truths.

[Bethany · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a short book about the War on Terror - it's the usual neoconservative line but with a Catholic angle. It's organized into a series of lessons, most of which are true, but the issues are treated pretty superficially. This would be a good introduction to the topic, but that's about it.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, written by a Catholic theologian, is a meditation on Western conflict with radical Islam from a Christian point of view. Weigel makes a lot of interesting points that you are unlikely to see elsewhere, however, there are areas where I feel that he is relying on a straw man.

[Skip Coale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Straight forwaerd analysis of Juhadism. Not restatement of Politically Correct rationalizations. But rather a candid examination of the driving forces for the current confilct looking at the Muslems, their religion but also critically looking at the history and experiences including the Crusades.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, George Weigel writes a good book. This book will give the reader some insight that we live in a very dangerous time.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this book. It's a quick and informative read!