Book Review

Faith, Reason, and The War against Jihadism, A Call to Action

by George Weigel

I. About the author:

George Weigel born in Baltimore, USA in 1951 is a catholic writer and a socio-political activist. The 58 year old author is renowned by his best-selling biography of the Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope. His works are mostly centered around US foreign policy, usually supported by strong facts, reasoning and arguments. His catholic background quite naturally poses a significant possibility of bias in this book, and is left to be determined by the reader.

II. About the reader:

Krishnaprasad Sankar is a 24 year old Electrical Engineering college graduate from the University of New Mexico. He was born and brought up in Chennai, India during the first 21 years of his life under the principles of the Hindu way of life. He has very limited knowledge of the Abrahamic faiths and their history in the context of this book. With respect to books and literature, he is a clear beginner and a complete amateur in terms of reading capabilities. His interests usually lean towards science, philosophy and socio-politics.

III. Motivation:

The primary motivation for me to read this book originated from the exceptionally instigating documentary account of the recent 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks sent by Karthik [http://vimeo.com/5409826]. The video clearly transcripted the phone-intercepted terrorists' dialogue during the incident that vividly quoted one of them saying "Allah has ordered us to kill and create fear in the heart of non-believers through the Qu'raan…kill as many as you can and you shall have martyrdom". This led me to some basic research through the related translated verses of the holy book, to verify a surprising revelation to me that a faith can incite the notion to kill people without a logical reason. It was indeed true (discounting the small possibility of distortion in translation Arabic to English) [http://www.masjidtucson.org/quran/noframes/ch8.html]. The lack of this logical reason essentially urged me to read more regarding Jihadism which ultimately led me to this mainly because of its analytical approach and the size of the book.

IV. Synopsys:

In short, this 165 page book is quite an urgent necessity for those either affected by or curious about the logic and reason behind the mass killing of the 3000 and odd people on September 11, 2001. First, the book dwells into establishing the importance of this understanding in the present state of affairs. The author reiterates, using the 9/11 attacks as a background, the essential need to understand the nature and motive of the enemy in the war against terrorism. The first two of the three parts of the book deals with a well-supported and referenced history of the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The author strives to point out the incorrectness of the notion that the three faiths are like the legs of one stool. He enumerates various historical reasons for why Islam always claimed supersession over the other two faiths to the degree that the revelations of god to the holy messenger Mohammad was final and is the superset of all the previous revelations through Abraham and Jesus. Through this point of view the faith is said to clearly take a stance of non-toleration with all other faiths. Also that the holy scripture of the faith, Qu'raan does not allow to be improvised, modified of interpreted in any other way than what was originally written by the messengers of god. These differentiated Islam vastly from Judaism and Christianity according to the author and responsible for the foundation of the Jihadist sentiment. In simple terms the belief behind Jihad or the holy war is that Islam is rather a state than a religion and all people outside this boundary of faith or non-believers are unfit for existence unless they submit to the principles of the state. It is also emphasized in the book that it is extremely essential to reach a consensus on this understanding since dwelling under the mist of uncertainty about the faith will be detrimental to the maturity of the faith itself and dangerous to the world (others). The third part of the book deals with the fine grain details of the origin and development of invasion of Iraq by the United States and the issues with Iran. Finally the book engages the reader towards possible solutions to the ideological war camouflaged by its theological nature which is the enticing essence of the book.

V. Opinion

On the outset, this book requires interest in theology, history, and socio-political current-affairs. It will excite people like me who want to know and understand the root-cause behind Jihad based terrorism, the most important and dangerous problem in the modern world. Though this is a fairly short text, the author is able to captivate the reader in well-constructed details. That being said, this book's full potential can be extracted by paying close attention to detail and reasoning. Most significantly, during the first half of the book the author's catholic background does play a major role that may have some question the skew in his views, particularly while comparing Christianity and Islam. This book is very informative overall and will certainly encourage the reader to dwell more into the subject while being a fairly short and enjoyable read.