Osama bin Laden's Theology is Still Alive

Yesterday was May Day, a holiday long calendared by Soviet regimes as a day to celebrate victories of socialistic communism. Some have suggested it ought to be renamed as the Victims of Communism Day. Perhaps the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II effectively changed the holiday to celebrate the victory over communism.

Indeed, the Blessed John Paul II helped assign communism to the ash heap of history. But that was the 20th century.

The former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Jim Nicholson, was with the late Blessed John Paul II shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Nicholson vividly recalled what the late pontiff instinctively said, "Ambassador Nicholson, we must stop these people who kill in the name of God."

Osama bin Laden, an enemy of the 21st century who killed in the name of Allah, was reported last night as dead. Many hailed it as "great for America." Fox News' Geraldo Rivera was literally bouncing in his chair at hearing the news. President Obama crowned bin Laden's death as the "most significant advance" in the fight against terrorism. Yet, Obama rightly pointed out that bin Laden's death "does not mark the end of our effort."

Despite this pronouncement by the President, many in the mainstream media welcomed bin Laden's death as the "end to the War on Terror." This is sentiment is categorically false and dangerous.

While the obituary of Osama bin Laden has been written, the obituary of his idea -- jihadism -- has yet to be finished.

The moment the first commercial airliner plunged into the World Trade Center tower, the world was violently shoved into a new 21st century warfare. Its asymmetrical, global, non-state actors are ideological and motivated by a defective theology. This is perhaps what, as the late John Paul II warned to Ambassador Nicholson, makes the jihadists more dangerous than the Soviet Union.

At the height of the Cold War, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' 1983 pastoral letter, "The Challenge of Peace," held that the greatest threat to peace was "the mere possession of nuclear weapons." Papal biographer and theologian George Weigel suggests the opposite. "Nuclear weapons were not the primary threat to peace; communism was. When communism went, so did the threat posed by the weapons." Here, Weigel argues that weaponry is not the primary concern in war, but the ideas of the combatants -- the ideology -- is at the crux of the conflict.

In his 2008 book, Faith, Reason, and the War Against Jihadism: A Call to Action, Weigel reveals the theological roots to this struggle between the West and jihadism. Weigel notes that "a West that has lost the ability to think in terms of ‘God' and ‘Satan'...is a West that will be at a loss to recognize what inspires and empowers these enemies of the West who showed their bloody hand on September 11, 2001." Weigel then systematically deconstructs the enemy and provides a new way to confront it.

First, we must not be misled by some kind of an affinity with the jihadists' faith. It is often said that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all worship the same God of Abraham. Weigel dismisses this bogus starting point of dialogue between the West and jihad: "the word ‘Abrahamic' does not designate merely origin and patrimony; it includes finality and destiny." What's more, Islam "takes a radically supersessionist view of both Judaism and Christianity, claiming that the final revelation to Muhammad de facto trumps, by way of supersession, any prior revelatory value..." For Muslims, Islam is the only way.

And what of this God of Abraham? The jihadists give many names to Allah, but not one of them is "Father." Weigel points out that if Allah is not our Father, "then it is difficult to imagine the human person as having been made ‘in the image of God.'" This loose understanding leaves the human person without any concrete dignity or trascendental worth.

To this point, Weigel describes what one of the first jihadist theorists, Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Halim ibn Taymiyya, taught, "God relates to the world through his will, and there is no spiritual wrestling, so to speak, with the divine will -- there is only submission." This idea of submission is at the center of what the jihadists believe. God is "lawgiver" and "Absolute Will." Another name jihadists will never call Allah is logos: the Greek word meaning word and reason. Weigel cites this as the "key theological move that underwrites today's jihadist ideology" because in this "frame of reference, [jihadists are] justified in believing that God can command anything-even the irrational."

Pope Benedict XVI, ever the teacher, uncovered the dangers in this understanding of God in a 2008 lecture at Regensburg University. In his discussion of voluntas ordinata, the Holy Father argues that this notion of "God's transcendence and otherness" keeps reason out of man's reach. Fr. James Schall, S.J. of Georgetown University also notes that in this "supposed basis of our own unknowing, we end up having no relation to Him at all." Ultimately, Benedict argues, not to act "with logos is contrary to God's nature." Faith without reason is not only contrary to God's nature, Weigel contends, it is inexorably opposed to human nature as well: "Nothing human takes place outside the realm or beyond the reach of moral reason."

Some years ago, Khaled Hosseini's bestseller, The Kite Runner, was made for the big screen and released in theatres worldwide. Hosseini's book is largely autobiographical and details the brutality of the Taliban regime. In the 2007 film, we see the main character, Amir, respecting the dying wish of his childhood friend by helping a young boy, Sohrab, escape to America. While trying to locate the boy, Amir visits an Afghan soccer stadium. During halftime of the game, the Taliban executes a public stoning of an adulterer-it is depicted graphically. I can still recall in the theatre seeing a woman visibly shake in her chair and then whisper to her friend: "This doesn't make any sense!"

Sense is something the jihadists publicly reject. For as Weigel quotes from a sign posted by the Taliban religious police: "Throw reason to the dogs -- it stinks of corruption." Unlike the Taliban, Christianity has historically embraced and defended human reason, most recently at the University of Regensburg, where the Holy Father called for a fair religious dialogue grounded in logos. Benedict encouraged the Islamic world to come to terms with the Enlightenment, which means a serious effort to "explore the possibility of an Islamic case for religious tolerance, social pluralism, and civil society."

The jihadists answered by calling for his assassination.

This, and in the repeated attacks and foiled plots after September 11, testifies to the relative meaninglessness of Osama bin Laden's death. Jihadism has birthed hundreds of thousands of Osama bin Ladens. Just as if Guantanamo Bay were to be closed, just as if there were to be no U.S. military presence in the Middle East, and just as if Israel were to cease settlement expansion, bin Laden's death does not mean the terror attacks will stop. The idea lives on.

And so, George Weigel provides a "Regensburg policy" of sorts. He intertwines the battle of intellect and the battle of might. A war against jihadism cannot be won by the military alone; it must be won by reason as well. In order to reverse the jihadist tide, "the United States is, or ought to be, the repository of ideas, drawn from both faith and reason, that must shape the struggle."

Weigel's final chapter is titled: "There is no escape from U.S. leadership." The burden of American power must be embraced; America must say to the world: I am your partner and your protector. Similarly, the Kite Runner's Sohrab -- the young boy Amir saved from indentured sexual servitude to the Taliban elite -- asked Amir to retrieve his newly flown kite, descending off the horizon. Amir says to the boy: "For you, a thousand times over."