A question often raised concerning ISIS is, “Why in the world would young people in the West would want to join them?” There are, of course, a rash of opinions on the topic, but those of us who want something more substantial than that will need to read and think, and then think some more. I am convinced there is no simple answer but rather a confluence of social and personal pressures, yearnings, attractions, and dislikes that make the choice feel not merely possible but necessary.

To try to comprehend this, we will need to read and think about both the culture of the West and the world of Islamic life and thought, including the version of Islam promoted by jihadists. A careful consideration of both sides of the issue is required. Why are young adults leaving the one to join the other? There is at work forces of both repulsion and attraction.

Perhaps you have already seen these two articles, but I commend them to you as helpful in our attempts to truly understand and respond Christianly to our world.

The first is “What ISIS Really Wants” by Graeme Wood in The Atlantic (March 2015)—it can be read here.

The second is “In Defense of Islam” by Ross Douthat in the New York Times (February 18, 2015)—it can be read here.

And as always, I would love to read your comments about either/both pieces.

Introduction

            This is a guest blog by an acquaintance of mine, Thomas K. Johnson, a philosopher and theologian. It’s a piece of rather serious philosophical writing addressing some of what lies beneath the class between Islamic terrorists and the West. If you don’t read this sort of essay regularly, you may need to pause and work through the piece slowly, but the effort is worth your while.

            Tom argues that both sides in the conflict have a mistaken notion of where we find a basis for morality. Western secularists find morality in the social contract a society develops to bring order to life; Muslims find morality in the revelation found in the Qu’ran; and Christians find morality in the revelation of God’s law found in the Bible. Sounds reasonable enough, but if we think about it, each system of morality is authoritative only for the members of that particular tribe. The members of the other tribes reject the alterative system and its basis, and fear that if it is followed a form of nihilism will result overthrowing the very nature of the civilization we wish to defend. Tom argues, further, that this Christian thinking about morality is a deviation of the historic, orthodox position on the topic, a position that allows Christians to have a basis on which to discuss right and wrong with both secularists and Muslims. Thinking clearly is necessary if we want to understand the deep divisions fragmenting our world and the deadly violence that is being used by committed people to try to stop the wave of nihilism that they see threatening all they hold dear.

Lessons from Paris 2015: Clash of Civilizations or Battling Nihilisms?

            For about twenty years, because of important publications with similar titles from the pen of Samuel Huntington, it has been common to interpret international and cross cultural events in light of The Clash of Civilizations theory. It was claimed that global and regional conflict would no longer be along ideological or economic lines, but rather between opposing civilizations. The several civilizations are distinguished from each other by language, history, culture, tradition, and, especially by different religions, with the role of religions in civilizations and inter-civilizational conflicts becoming increasingly large as a result of globalization.

            Some Christians liked the Huntington thesis because it recognized an important role of religions in society. But in recent times this theory has, in my opinion, been partly disproved because of the role that religious freedom can play in societies Nevertheless, the clash of civilizations continues to have plausibility sufficient to influence both the interpretation of current events and the decisions of governments. I think this theory played a tragic role in shaping the American “War on Terror.” And I heard this theory being used by some to interpret the tragic events in Paris over the last two weeks. As an alternative to the clash theory of civilizations, I would offer a different interpretation of what we saw in Paris. We should ask if we are seeing a cultural battle between different perceptions of nihilism, especially as different groups of people defend against the perceived nihilism of the other.

            The word “nihilism” comes from the Latin word nihil, which means “nothing.” One of the ways the word came into our modern languages was through the Judeo-Christian claim that creation is or was ex nihilo, meaning “from nothing.” Those of us who studied western civilization in American universities commonly associate nihilism with the name of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and his various intellectual heirs. Nietzsche and followers, or so we heard, believed in no objective truth, no objective right and wrong, no God’s eye view of the universe. All we have, they claim, are competing examples of the will to power, with the important proviso that the elegant way to exercise the will to power is not by means of brutality but by means of telling a controlling narrative. By means of telling a compelling story, we create new values, even though no values exist outside the stories we tell.

            Partly informed by such Nietzschean considerations, during the many years I taught university classes on the history of western ethics, I often suggested that the era we call “modernity” was characterized by a significant shift in the way people in the West considered right and wrong.

            Prior to modernity, our western cultural ancestors (at least those who were not nihilists) thought  that right and wrong were somehow rooted in the nature of being or the nature of the universe. This was true whether we studied Plato, the Stoics, the ancient Jewish philosophers like Philo, or Christian thought from Augustine and Aquinas through Martin Luther and John Calvin. (It was even true of Aristotle and Old Testament books such as Genesis, Amos, and Proverbs.) A key phrase running through much of this moral/cultural heritage, especially during the fully developed stage of the biblical/classical synthesis, was “the natural law,” meaning a moral law that was somehow related to that which truly is, to being itself. “Ought” was always based on “is;” “should” arose from the nature of being.

            Starting with modernity, a huge change occurred across western civilization, including both secularism and the Christian tradition, so that right and wrong were seen as based in history, not in being. We can take Thomas Hobbes’s important book, Leviathan (1651), as a signal of the transition to modernity. At least as popularly understood, Hobbes taught that right and wrong are entirely rooted in the social contract by which society is formed. Outside the social contract, in the state of nature, there is only the war of all against all; within the social contract imposed by a sovereign on the people, there is the rule of law on the basis of which we know the difference between right and wrong.

            To note with especial clarity: within the modern Hobbesian worldview, it is not only our knowledge of right and wrong that is dependent on history; the very existence of right and wrong is dependent on historical facts, particularly whether or not a particular social contract exists. “Ought” was no longer based on “is;” ought was now seen as historically dependent or historically accidental. And after a study of Hobbes ethics, my university students often seemed to feel threatened by nihilism, and during the classroom discussion they would begin grasping for some basis for morality or some explanation of right and wrong that was not entirely dependent on a particular political history that our neighbors might not share or accept.

            It still surprises me (though I have known it for many years) that many religiously conservative Christians, many calling themselves pietistic, confessional, or evangelical, have been simultaneously partly modernist in their philosophy regarding the foundations of ethics. Even among Christians since Hobbes we find the new modernist idea that the existence of right and wrong, or our knowledge of right and wrong, is based entirely on particular historical facts.

            Specifically, many have thought, we would not know right and wrong if God had not given us the Bible or the Ten Commandments. Please do not misunderstand me: I believe God gave us the Bible and that God placed the Ten Commandments with a special status within the Bible as written in stone. (I also read from both the Old and New Testaments in my quiet time this morning.) But prior to modernity, both Protestant and Catholic Christians generally said that God wrote his moral law on the human mind, heart, and conscience, as the image of his eternal moral character, as part of creation, which was repeated in the Ten Commandments.

            The pre-modern Christian view, taught by both Catholics and Protestants, was that both the existence of right and wrong and our knowledge of right and wrong were largely based on creation, not entirely on salvation history. But after Hobbes, many Christians started to sound a lot like Hobbes, saying right and wrong are dependent on history and our knowledge of history, whether the history of a social contract (Hobbes) or the history of redemption recorded in the Bible (some Christians).

            Christians and secularists were too often united in separating ethics from being. This left western culture sometimes fluctuating between feeling threatened by moral nihilism and accepting a historical moral authority that others perceived to be arbitrary.

            I have been harsh in my description of my Christian community, so bear with my brief critique of Islam. It seems clear to me that Islam already had a weakness in the direction of the moral reasoning of modernity already before the onset of modernity. Based merely on reading a few textbooks on Islamic history, theology, and ethics, it seems to me that Muslim ethics usually has seen our knowledge of right and wrong as based entirely, or almost entirely, on history and our knowledge of that history. That is why the Koran plays a different role in the life of the Muslim than I think the Bible should play in the life of a Christian. Well before the onset of modernity, Muslim theologians generally thought the proper knowledge of right and wrong was based on the Koran, the tradition, and the multiple schools of Islamic law, all of which are historically contingent. So far there has been very little place for Muslim theologians to say that Allah wrote the demands of the Sharia onto the human heart, mind, and conscience in creation prior to giving the Koran, such that knowledge of the Sharia (and the difference between right and wrong) becomes partly independent from a particular historical community. Muslims may feel that any question about their prophet is blasphemous because it raises the specter of nihilism, the loss of all meaning and morals. At the same time, those of us who pointedly do not find our identity within Muslim history perceive the desired imposition of the Sharia on our societies as either a power grab or an assault on all our meanings and morals, another specter of nihilism.

            Seeing right and wrong, or our knowledge of right and wrong, as being entirely historically contingent truly does, I believe, leave us philosophically vulnerable to become nihilists. It is only a small step within the human mind from following modernity and saying my (or our) knowledge of right and wrong is entirely dependent on my history (whether as a Muslim, as a Christian, or as a follower of Hobbes) to feeling like a nihilist, that there are no universal moral rules that apply to all people everywhere. In my own study and university teaching, I always felt a steadily unfolding progression of ideas from Hobbes to Nietzsche. I am sure that basing ethics entirely on history (Hobbes) leads slowly but surely to nihilism, the loss of morals and meaning on the everyday level, as well as to the loss of ultimate truth claims. And we perceive this threatening nihilism more quickly among the people who do not share our own cultural or religious story. Muslims easily perceive both Christians and secularists as endangered by nihilism, and vice versa.

            What we have seen recently on the streets of Paris is, I believe, the result of two battling nihilisms, more precisely, two groups of people striving to defend themselves against the threat of nihilism they perceive in the historical relativism of their neighbors. They do not feel like they can trust their neighbors to act on the basis of a standard of behavior that is suitable for all of humanity. By this I do not in any way imply a moral equivalency between the good work of the French police, defending their city and their citizens, and the truly evil work of terrorists murdering ordinary people. Nor do I imply that a handful of terrorists really represent many millions of Muslims. But I would call our attention to a philosophical similarity between radical Islam, admittedly more extreme than older Islam because of doctrinal changes, and western democracy. Both separate knowledge of right and wrong from being; both say right and wrong are based on the way we tell the history of our community; both are left using force (one illegitimate, one legitimate) to enforce the values of their community without a satisfactory appeal to a non-historical basis for universal values or moral ideals; both feel like the other represents the threat of nihilism. The gun battles in the Paris streets portray the conflict of competing nihilisms, Mohammed (as interpreted by extremists) versus Thomas Hobbes (as followed across modernity), unified in separating morality from the nature of being, but in such a way that most people perceive the implied nihilism in the worldview of the other before they perceive the threat of nihilism in their own worldviews. And we Christians often do not know what to say because we have neglected important themes in the classical Christian tradition of moral thought that connected ethics with being.

            Obviously I would like to see a renewed discussion of the relation between being and ethics, the natural moral law, in the spirit of the biblical/classical synthesis. This is essential to address the moral nihilism against which both radical Islam and the western democracies are fighting. As a small step in this direction, but with less metaphysics involved, I am sure there would be tremendous benefit in renewed global public discussion of the relation between universal human duties (with its own body of literature) and universal human rights (with a rich body of literature). Both of these discussions embody valuable ongoing echoes of the older tradition of discussing God’s natural moral law. Both of these ongoing discussions represent models of the relation between particular religions and public life that avoid or reduce the threat of nihilism.

            Both of these discussions can be open to people of a variety of religions or of no defined religion in a manner that may help us to trust others to follow some defined standard of behavior. In my own writing I have attempted to contribute to both of these global discussions in a manner that is clearly rooted in my evangelical Christian convictions but also open to discussion with people of other convictions.

            The nihilism, more precisely the perceived threat of nihilism, embodied in the gunfire on the streets of Paris is, I think, more of a feeling than a reasoned package of convictions. Obviously it has to be addressed by preachers and philosophers of religion as a fundamental human need to be addressed by faith. But nihilism is not only a faith problem; good moral reason also has a role to play. We can have more public considerations of universal human rights and universal human duties, along with the religious and philosophical discussion of what those duties/rights are and where they originate, so the relation between ethics and being as least gets back on the table. The problem in Paris goes beyond gathering intelligence about future terrorists or better efforts to integrate religious minorities and immigrants into the western democracies, though those steps are essential. The problems illustrated on the streets of Paris are also problems of fundamental moral philosophy. Are there reasons not to be nihilists that are not only based in my telling of my community’s story, reasons that I can explain to people who follow another story or religion?

That is part of the challenge for Christian moral philosophers today.

Thomas K. Johnson, Ph.D. is Professor of Ethics, Global Scholars; Vice President for Research, Martin Bucer European School of Theology; Senior Advisor to the Theological Commission, World Evangelical Alliance; and an ordained minister, Presbyterian Church in America. Many of the books and essays he has written or edited on ethics, human rights, and the role of religion in society are available as free downloads at http://www.bucer.org/resources.html. With his wife, Leslie P. Johnson, he has lived in post-communist Europe for more than twenty years.

Copyright © 2015 Thomas K. Johnson (johnson.thomas.k@gmail.com) Reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

            The world remains a troubled, and troubling place. Wars have proliferated into seemingly never ending skirmishes in numerous places around the globe, and the process of globalization means the West will be party to them even if we believe we are a force for goodness and freedom in a world torn apart by intolerance, greed, religious, nationalist and ethnic fervor, and old grievances. Too much is at stake for us to remain aloof, whether what is at stake is oil, or international terrorism, or human dignity. Most of the time I hear of all this in three forms: brief videos or photos that capture single decontextualized moments in the larger conflict, news stories that try to give some impression of what is happening, and horrific statistics of numbers killed, displaced, or maimed.

            One perspective that is difficult to achieve is the view on the ground, the way things look as events unfold not to policy makers, or military commanders, or media correspondents but to the individuals taking part in the action. I sometimes assume I can imagine that perspective, but that is an illusion. Once the conflict is underway, decisions must be made not with careful reflection but in the moment, and all the moments during armed conflict are fiercely unforgiving. Hesitate to shoot, and you might be shot, but pulling the trigger might result in some tragedy far beyond the death of the enemy combatant who has you in his sites. Brokenness is far messier than we usually admit, and armed conflict is the messiest of all. This does not mean we give up on trying to understand, but it does mean our conclusions should reflect a measure of nuance that is far deeper than what we hear from pundits, talk show hosts, culture warriors, and partisan political debates.

            Trying to gain some sense of the view on the ground—though it will always remain badly incomplete—can help in this process. Here are two books that help provide that.

Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi (Fred Burton & Samuel Katz, 2013)

            On September 11, 2012, armed men stormed the American diplomatic mission compound in Benghazi, Libya. When the attack was over at dawn the next day, the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, the Information Officer, Sean Smith, and two CIA agents, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were dead. Several of the Diplomatic Security (DS) agents, whose task is to provide protection for the Ambassador (and other diplomats) were badly injured, and all were exhausted and dispirited over the fact that on their watch such a tragedy unfolded. Under Fire is their story, told from the perspective of the DS agents on the ground in Benghazi.

            One of the authors of Under Fire, Fred Burton, is a former State Department counterterrorism deputy chief and DS agent. The other, Samuel Katz, is an expert on Middle East security and international terrorism.

The linchpin of America’s ability to lead the world, from around the world, even in locations and war zones where the intelligence community drives the diplomatic engine, is the courage, dedication, and sacrifice of the men and women of the Diplomatic Security Service who find themselves in harm’s way, driving a follow car or maintaining security programs at fortresslike embassies, and those that are not fortresses, in locations that few Americans would be able to locate on a map. American diplomatic interests—and the realities of day-to-day expeditionary diplomacy—could never be protected if this intrepid force of federal agents were not on post and on guard. The true story of the Benghazi attack is not one of failure or cover-up. The true story of Benghazi is that men and women volunteer to place themselves between a bullet or a bomb and America's diplomats and interests inside the crosshairs, inside the most dangerous and volatile locations in the world. [p. 264]

            Under Fire is not all you will need to read about the Benghazi attack. Numerous hearings have been held and reports issued in an attempt to discover what happened and why, and who, if anyone is to blame. Some of this involves an honest effort to find the truth, while much is little more than partisan posturing. Under Fire does not try to sort all that out, but rather tells the story of what the attack was like for the DS agents on the ground that had a tough, unenviable, if not utterly impossible job to do in Benghazi, and put their lives on the line attempting to fulfill it. It is easy, in discussions of Benghazi and similar events and places, for some of the players to fade into invisibility in the background. That must not happen, not because these DS agents are Americans but because they are created in the image of God.

The Good Soldiers (David Finkel, 2009)

            In 2007-2008 an army battalion of soldiers known as the “Rangers,” were sent to Iraq as part of President Bush’s strategy (“the surge”) of increasing the number of American forces in that country. Over a period of 15 months the 2-16 Battalion waited ready to dive for cover when rockets or mortar shells were lobbed into their base, went out on patrol into urban areas where the enemy, indistinguishable from ordinary civilians, prepared hidden traps designed to kill and maim, and kept one another steady in their determination to make a difference in the war. For 8 of those 15 months, Washington Post reporter David Finkel was embedded with the 2-16, living with the soldiers, going with them on missions, and promising to tell their story. “From the beginning,” Finkel says, “I explained to them that my intent was to document their corner of the war, without agenda.” The Good Soldier is Finkel’s attempt to fulfill that promise. Fourteen soldiers of the 2-16 did not return alive, and many more returned to civilian life badly broken in body and soul. And in the background Iraq remains in the news, torn by continuing armed conflict.

            It happened soon after sunrise on a quiet Sunday morning and shook every building on the FOB [Forward Operating Base]. Doors bowed from the concussion. Windows broke and blew out. It wasn't the usual rocket or mortar, but something louder and scarier. There’d been no siren, no warning at all, just a sudden explosion that felt like the end of the world had arrived, and before anyone had a chance to do anything, such as run for a bunker or crawl under a bed, there was a second explosion, and a third.

            The day of the lob bombs, this would be called. Soldiers counted fifteen explosions in all, although some may have been mixed in with the roars of missiles being fired from Apache gunships or their own racing hearts. Whatever the true number, the explosions went on for twenty minutes, and only as calm returned did the audacity of what had just happened become clear.

            There had been two long dump trucks. They had pulled off Route Pluto across from the FOB, into a dirt area beyond which was a cement factory. Each was carrying a load of thousands of brightly colored bags of chicken-flavored potato chips that had been manufactured in Syria, but hidden beneath were propane tanks on launching rails, which became visible only as the backs of the trucks rose and the bags of potato chips fell away.

            These tanks were the bombs. Each had been packed with ball bearings and explosives. A 107-millimeter rocket booster attached to the bottom was just strong enough to lob a tank over the high wall surrounding the FOB, at which point it turned nose down and plummeted onto its detonator, exploding with the noise and force of a five-hundred-pound bomb and spraying shrapnel and ball bearings in every direction for hundreds of yards. One after another, the bombs exploded in terrifying succession, until the two launching trucks were finally destroyed by Hellfire missiles, and when the wreckage had cooled enough to be searched, soldiers discovered an inscription on one of the trucks that read, when translated: “A statement from the Holy Koran. Victory is coming from God, and the entire triumph is near.” Other statements had been left, too, in the form of text messages on cell phones. “Little Hiroshima is going to happen to you,” was one. “How was your morning now? Surprises are coming.”

            This was the very first use in Iraq of a weapon that would eventually spread across much of Baghdad and be described by the military as ‘the greatest threat right now that we face” because of its capacity to kill “scores of soldiers” at once. If there was any good news to this first attack, it was that no one was seriously injured. But the damage to the FOB was significant, perhaps in the millions of dollars, and after the attack ended, Kauzlarich went to survey the extent of it, eventually arriving at a collapsed trailer outside of which stood Jeffrey Sauer.

            The trailer had been his. He had been inside, waking up, when the lob bombs began landing nearby. Blast walls surrounding the trailer had stopped the shrapnel, but concussions caved in the roof and walls, and as the trailer came down he covered his head and waited to die. Explosion after explosion—this time Sauer heard them all. Finally, he crawled outside into a smoking landscape of broken buildings and vehicles, and when Kauzlarich arrived, he was standing with a dazed expression, staring at something crawling across the ground.

            “See that bug?” he said to Kauzlarich.

            Kauzlarich nodded.

            “A week ago, I would have crushed it. But it’s Sunday, and I almost got my ass waxed, so I’m gonna let it live,” he said, and as he continued to watch the bug, Kauzlarich continued to watch the face of a man soon would be going home. [175-176]

            What happens to soldiers on the front line is always horrible. For those of us who have never been there, it is also unimaginable. The horror of the front lines is not necessarily reason not to go to war in a just cause, but it is sufficient reason to care for the soldiers who were there, regardless of the cost.

            The Good Soldiers allows us to come along through the long stretches of boredom and brief periods of intense terror that occupied the days of the 2-16 Battalion in Iraq. We not only learn what they did and talked about, but how being there changed them forever, even if they were one of the fortunate ones that were missed by the bullets and shrapnel and crushing explosions.

Under Fire: The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi by Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press; 2013) 275 pages + notes + index.

The Good Soldiers by David Finkel (New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books; 2009) 273 pages + appendix.

I have always believed that it’s good to listen to critics, to give them a fair hearing. The reason is that they just might be onto something. Since I’m already convinced—and my wife confirms—that I fail to get everything right, a critic might spot something I should change, or rethink, or redo, or apologize for. Now, I don’t like the process involved, and usually feel rather annoyed when they get some criticism of me correct. Even if they in the process remind me how annoying other people can be. Sorry, I mean even if also they remind me how easily I can be annoyed.

Anyway. I believe the same thing about my faith. The best test, it seems to me, is not whether I feel confident in what I believe, but whether I can face the best challenges of the most thoughtful unbelievers and not only believe but with sufficiently good reasons.

Sometimes I am surprised by the challenges or questions issued by the critics of my faith. They hold a position I have not fully appreciated, or are bothered by something I had not considered all that important. Listening to the critics of the faith, in other words, has benefits.

I wish I could recommend A Muslim View of Christianity to everyone, but it is a scholarly book, produced by an Islamic academic for fellow scholars who are engaged in Muslim-Christian dialogue. Although well written and thoughtfully developed, Mahmoud Ayoub’s collection of essays tends to be academically demanding in the best sense of the term.

When I began A Muslim View of Christianity, I expected to find (among other things) thoughtful arguments about both the similarities and differences between Islam and Christianity, serious questions about the veracity of Scripture and the historicity of Christ’s death and resurrection, and reflections on the conflicts between the two from the pages of history. Ayoub provided all that and more.

What I was surprised to find was a plea for pluralism. Not pluralism in the sense that differing religions live side by side in tolerance, but pluralism in the philosophical sense, that in a pluralistic world no ultimate truth claims can be made. Three quotes among many, taken at random:

“We now know that no religion can claim an exclusive monopoly on salvation and truth. We must accept the fact that our forebears knew far less about world religions than we know. Hence, we must see our faith in global perspective as one among many, each having its own spiritual heritage and civilization. In light of this, no religious” community or religio-ethnic group can claim a special and exclusive mission to mankind.” [60]

“The Qur’an, far more than Muslims have ever done, accepts the pluralism of religions and affirms the unity of faith. The only common elements it insists on are sincere faith in God and works of righteousness.” [21]

“True dialogue is conversation among persons and not a confrontation between ideas. If Muslim-Christian dialogue is to be at all meaningful, it must go beyond the letter of scriptures, creed, and tradition. Men and women of faith in both communities must learn to listen to the divine voice speaking through revelation and history, and together seek to understand what God is saying to Muslims through Christianity and to Christians through Islam. In more practical terms, this means that Christians and Muslims must go beyond the history of a reified religion and try instead to share in the commonality of faith. Then it will, we hope, be realized that although Christians and Muslims have followed different roads toward the goal of human fulfillment in God, the goal is one and the roads meet at many points.” [229]

One more thing: Although I am not at liberty to name my sources, I have it on good authority that more and more Islamic clerics are arguing for religious pluralism, especially among Shi’a scholars in Qum, the holy city in Iran.