Belmont Club had a fascinating post on Saturday on the War on Terror.
The post had an encouraging report on the state of the War (“the enemy is clearly and palpably losing ground” in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel), and then moved into a discussion of the intellectual roots of the War, and its relation to religion — using the writings of Karen Armstrong and Sam Harris as a springboard:
Harris claims that if we seriously subscribe to God in any form we will eventually wind up settling accounts with WMDs; hence we must abolish God. Armstrong asserts that unless we accept all gods, any religion left out will eventually resort to [WMDs]. . . .
The cure to religious extremism, according to these arguments, is a choice of two elixirs: believing in nothing particular or classifying all religious belief as madness. . . . Both require the abolition of belief as the price of survival, the latter by maintaining there is nothing worth arguing over and the former asserting there is nothing to argue about.
The comments that followed suggested an alternative view:
Capt America: This bit on God . . . distorts the purpose behind the War on Terror. . . .It is not about God or any one particular definition thereof. The war on Terror is about ridding the world of the deadly manifestations of an all-encompassing worldview held by Islamic fascists.
Rick Darby: We are not at war against Allah. . . . I’d like to kill every committed Islamic terrorist that we can until they put down the sword for good. If that were accomplished, I’d be glad to chat with any Muslim and tell him or her that I admire many things about Islam. It has inspired an extraordinary design tradition.
I respect Muslims’ aversion to a society in which pursuit of power and money has replaced the search for God. It’s beautiful that they stop whatever they’re doing several times a day and remember that life offers a higher calling. . . .
There is a great deal worth preserving and celebrating in the heart of Islam. By doing everything we can to destroy its twisted ideology of hatred and killing, we must not imagine — and we must not send the message — that we are at war with the patient, because we would heal the disease.
Old Dad: The War on Terror is partly a war to free Islam from the Islamists. It’s no wonder that the United States is by far the most religious country in the west. The First Amendment practically ensures that. . . .
[M]ost of America is busy building the most tolerant, prosperous, and successful culture in the history of the world. In God We Trust, but we won’t shove it down your throat at the point of a gun. Allah, Yahweh, all our welcome here, just don’t fly planes into our buildings.
Dinesh D’Souza’s important article last month, on the intellectual response to Islamism (reprinted every year since 9/11, around July 4), is worth re-reading in this context. It is a powerful argument that the Islamic goal of a good society can only be achieved in a free society where religion is voluntary.