Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Very likely the answer to Islamic terrorism, when it arrives, will have a spiritual component. Terrorists in Syria, Iran and Iraq are driven by a vision of conquest and glory, as was Mohammad in the 10th century. The West, outwardly materialistic and secular, is driven by a different vision. As Islamic purists might see it, we are the flesh, they are the spirit, and the two are at war with each other. Profound secularists in the West and terrorists in the East do not understand that for much of human history the two have commingled and informed each other. A war between the flesh and the spirit in which one of the two permanently vanquished the other would lead to a tyranny of angels or devils. The struggle before us in the 21st century occurs in a theatre of thought and action in which lions may lay down with lambs, provided there is no final victory between, to put it in modern terms, the claims of science and the claims of religion. But in the mean time, terrorists are roving the wo...