New Atheism and the Jihad

In his recent book on the West’s war on “Jihadism,” Weigel observes that it is ironic that the “new atheism” has emerged just when religion has become unavoidably dominant in world politics. Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris would, Weigel suggests, deprive the West of necessary categories for engaging Islamic radicalism: “a West that has lost the ability to think in terms of ‘God’ and ‘Satan,’ and that has forgotten the drama contained in the idea of ‘redemption,’ is a West that will be at a loss to recognize what inspires and empowers those enemies of the West who showed their blood hand on September 11, 2001. A West that does not take religious ideas seriously is a West that will have disarmed itself, conceptually and imaginatively, in the midst of war.”