Faith, Reason, And the war Against Jihadism (Politics AND RELIGION: GODS AND Citizens) (Report‪)‬

In the late summer of 2001, a stateless man of whom most Americans had never heard sat in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan, surrounded by a few disciples, a satellite dishreceiver, and a TV set. The TV wasn't working, so one of the disciples sought the BBC's Arabic service on a radio. There, he learned that an airplane had struck the World Trade Center in New York. He excitedly told the others, who broke into celebration; but their leader said, simply, "Wait, wait." News came of the second tower being hit, and the leader wept and prayed; Osama bin Laden also stunned his disciples by holding up three fingers. When news of the strike on the Pentagon came, bin Laden held up four fingers, amazing his disciples even further. In this instance, they would be disappointed; because of the heroic actions of the passengers on United 93, the U.S. Capitol was spared. Yet in two hours, the landscape of twenty-first century public life had been radically changed. Viewed through a wide-angle lens, the events of 9/11 were a particularly lethal expression of the globalization of religious passion. Yet those events were something else, and something more: for Americans saw that day represented a specific, mortal threat to our civilization. War had been declared upon us by an enemy whose motivations were utterly alien to the 21st century sensibility of the West.