Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism - A Review

Weigel, George. Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, and Auckland: Doubleday, 2007. 195 pages. Acknowledgments. Notes. $18.95.

George Weigel is a Catholic – very Catholic, one might say. He is also a conservative who has contributed to Commentary, the neoconservative magazine. Here we have a little book (157 pages of text), with a big title, that reveals its Catholic roots in numerous ways. For example, Weigel dedicates the book to George Pell, the cardinal archbishop of Sydney, Australia. There are many references to Pope Benedict XVI and his writings. The signature block at the end of the acknowledgments reads:

G.W.
Commemoration of St. George
25 April 2007
Washington, D.C.

But the main way in which this strikes me as a Catholic (not “catholic”) book is that it is structured as a series of lessons. This is a sort of catechism on the subject of Islam, “jihadism,” and the West’s relations with Muslims and Islamic societies. After a brief introduction, the book consists of fifteen “lessons,” divided into three sections: “Understanding the Enemy,” “Rethinking Realism,” and “Deserving Victory.” These reflect Weigel’s purpose in writing this book. “My purpose here is to identify what we should have learned, since September 11, 2001: about the enemy, about us – and about what must be done to see us through to a future safe for freedom.”

First, since there are so many terms applied to this particular movement, I should say that Weigel likes the term “jihadism” for what others have called “Islamism,” “political Islam,” “Salafism,” or “Islamic fundamentalism.” Islamic fundamentalism does not necessarily imply either political revolution or violent action. Salafism refers to the sub-set of Islamists who believe that anyone who disagrees with them is an unbeliever or an apostate and, thus, deserves to die. Political Islam includes movements seeking to gain power through electoral processes or other peaceful means. Jihadism expresses a movement based on the necessity of undertaking a struggle, if necessary a violent struggle, in order to impose Islamic law on society.

Like Christianity, Islam lays claim to being a universal religion. Allah is everywhere, and the Quran speaks to all men, so a good Muslim may believe that all men ought to submit to the will of God and become Muslims. Most Muslims worry about things close to home, however, and are not overly exercised by the existence of non-Muslim countries far away. The Jihadists, such as Sayyid Qutb, are, Weigel informs us, in the tradition of Taymiyya (1263-1328) and al-Wahhab (1703/4-1792), and are driven by the idea that conflict between Islam and non-Islam is inevitable. In this view, jihad is a defense against the foreign and sinful ideas assaulting the Islamic world from all sides.

In his first section, “Understanding the Enemy,” Weigel reviews much of the history of Islamic interactions with the West and the principles of jihadist belief. This is good and useful material, and it tells us something about the intractability of the cause arrayed against us. I have one problem with this section, Weigel’s contention in his first lesson that: “The great human questions, including the great questions of public life, are ultimately theological.” This statement assumes a kind of belief not everyone shares, and it implies that Weigel believes that only religious belief can defeat religious belief. In other words, Weigel presumes here that our struggle with jihadism is a religious war, and that it must be a religious war on our side, as well as on theirs, if we are to win it.

The second section, “Rethinking Realism,” lays out a program for opposing jihadism by recognizing wickedness and preparing the way for “responsible and responsive government.” Weigel also asserts that deterrence is unlike to be of much use against those who seek martyrdom. There are some useful suggestions here, including espousal of a major coordinated campaign of public diplomacy. But it concerns me that, by eschewing deterrence, Weigel is, by extension, dismissing the concept of containment. The alternative is, of course, aggressive action taken to the enemy’s ground. I’m not so sure that jihadism cannot be contained, during the time needed to help responsible governments to evolve in the Muslim world.

Next, in “Deserving Victory,” Weigel asserts that we need to believe that we deserve to defeat jihadism. “Cultural self-confidence is indispensable to victory in the long-term struggle against jihadism.” He urges the West to avoid making concessions to Islamists in the name of tolerance. He suggest depriving jihadism of much of its funding “by developing alternatives to” oil. He asserts, most interestingly, that only a domestic political coalition of the center can be victorious.

Finally, he states that U.S. leadership is indispensable.

This is an interesting little book. One fears that it might be read as suggesting that the United States needs to rally its allies under the banner of Christendom and begin a crusade against Islam. I think Weigel’s aims are more limited, and the means he would use less military, than those of, say, Paul Wolfowitz. I find it hard, however, to see how one can wage an explicitly religious war without arousing passions that are at best difficult to control.