Confronting Political Islam Quotes

“At the beginning of the Cold War, George Kennan, a senior U.S. diplomat, advised his country to “contain” Soviet communism rather than capitulate to or crusade against it. Containment entailed not only military and economic strength, not only diplomacy, but also soft power—the attractiveness of a good example. Crucial, he wrote in 1947, was “the degree to which the United States can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the problem of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents of the time.”19 Kennan knew that the United States could do this, but knew that it might not, and he saw with a clear eye what would happen if it did not. He understood then what Americans should understand today: that their ability to negotiate their country’s internal divisions and their confidence in their constitutional democracy have consequences for the wider world. Now, as then, what happens within America is not just about America.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

“the United States has managed its cultural diversity through a collective determination among its people to be at once pluralistic and civil. As difficult as pluralism and civility are for both red and blue today, that is the way for America to be truest to itself. If secular and religious Americans can respect one another, avoid believing each other to be dangerous, and avoid being dangerous to each other—engage in what philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff calls dialogical pluralism—America also can set an example that is germane to the Middle East’s ongoing struggle.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

“No doubt most Americans would reject the notion that their country is ideological, in the manner of the Soviet Union or Iran (or, insofar as they have heard of it, the Electoral Palatinate). Surely, most would say, the United States is self-evidently rational. But the argument we have been making implies that every country is, in a sense, ideological, because every country or every regime has some vision of the good society, both domestic and international. The United States has value-shaped ends or goals as much as these other states. Following Thomas Jefferson, Americans believe that their country is not ideological because they believe that the truths in the Declaration of Independence are self-evident. True they are, but if their truth were self-evident then U.S. counterterrorism and counterinsurgency would not need to win the “hearts and minds” of millions of people. Indeed, across history countless thinkers have thought that all persons are not equal. The truly self-evident truth is that American values are contested around the world. That means that to many around the world the United States is an ideological country, not a rational one.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

“We do not consider our principles as dogmas contained in books that are said to come from heaven,” Turkey’s founder declaimed in 1937. “We derive our inspiration, not from heaven, or from an unseen world, but directly from life.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

“Some writers have drawn analogies between these dynamics and ideological struggles in the West’s own past.6 This book takes that insight much further. It is the first sustained analytical comparison between the Middle East today and various region-wide legitimacy crises in the history of Europe and the Americas—crises that exhibited remarkably similar chains of events. I present lessons about the current upheaval in Muslim societies, and its troubled interactions and interpenetration with the rest of the world, drawn from past ideological struggles in other parts of the globe. I make two general claims in this book: 1.  Understanding political Islam requires understanding its long twilight struggle with secularism. 2.  Understanding that Islamist-secularist struggle requires that we understand the origins, dynamics, and ultimate end of similar ideological struggles in the history of the Western world.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past

“Scottish and Dutch revolutions succeeded and invented a new thing in Europe: a Reformed realm. The Scottish insurrectionists won quickly and set up a Reformed (Presbyterian) kingdom in 1560. The Dutch had to fight the Spanish for nearly two decades, but in 1585 they set up the United Provinces of the Netherlands, with the Reformed as the established religion. The Calvinists proved adept not only at mobilizing for rebellion but at consolidating and institutionalizing power. That was long ago, and it was Europe. But parts of the Muslim world today, in many respects, bear an uncanny resemblance to that time and place. Over the past century, rulers of many majority-Muslim countries have amassed power by weakening other actors in their societies.”
― John M Owen IV, Confronting Political Islam: Six Lessons from the West's Past