Superb and timely. | Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action

The Real Battleground with Jihadism | Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action | George Weigel

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	• Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action George Weigel Doubleday, 2007 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Absolutely first-rate analysis

There is beginning to be a flood of books about global jihad and the threat it poses to the West. There is almost nothing about what to do about it, how to fight it and win to save the culture the West has created. This superb book by George Weigel suggests 15 steps that will help in this global struggle to keep from being subverted and inundated by a totally alien totalitarian ideology completely at odds with concepts such as the dignity and worth of each individual, the equality of women, freedom of speech, self-determination, democracy, free will, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.

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Superb and timely.

This book was particularly well constructed and arrives a time where it is becoming unthinkable to think. Weigel begins to examine the world in which we live, not from a "post 9/11" standpoint, but from a person who is challenging the world to think about what is happening and look with a greater objectivity to how we can work for a world of true freedom.

The Real Battleground with Jihadism

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.

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Insightful review

This book by Wiegel is well-written, clear and most insightful. He outlines ways of looking at the problems that I had not experienced before. We ignore the signs at our own peril.

faith,reason,and the war against jihadism

While I agree with the premise and the purpose of this book I found it difficult to read and a little disjointed.I think the author could have better made his point in about half the pages.I also think the author should realize not every one has his vocabulary or the needed background in Islam to know what he is talking about.I love to read his essays in the weekly Catholic paper.

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?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 that: 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 jihadism: 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.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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