THE INFLUENCE OF FAITH: RELIGIOUS GROUPS & U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

Edited by Elliott Abrams Rowman & Littlefield, 2001 256 pages, $24.95

To order: (800) 462-6420 or www.rowmanlittlefield.com

Given that its editor could not have known how timely his book would be while he was compiling it — in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001 — The Influence of Faith is uncannily appropriate to the situation the United States now faces in that date's aftermath. It's a situation in which religion is not just one aspect among many in the nation's foreign policy, but, arguably, the country's single most important consideration.

Adding weight to the book's gravitas is the fact that Abrams, who put together this collection of essays by leading political and religious thinkers while he was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, (a Washington, D.C. think tank,) has since become a special assistant to President George W. Bush.

“Why is the denial of religious freedom a daily occurrence throughout the world?” Abrams asks in his introduction. “Why do some governments perceive religious faith as threatening? Why are religious minorities ill treated, or forcibly converted, or even tortured and killed?”

Well, because “the power and salience of religion have increased,” as Abrams notes.

From Islam's bloody borders to the persecution of Christians in China, the contributors of The Influence of Faith look at problems involving religions abroad and religious crusaders seeking to end murder, suffering and injustice. No chapter is more timely than the one by Habib Malik, a professor at the Lebanese American University and a Christian living in an Islamic world, on “Political Islam and the Roots of Violence.”

As politicians constantly remind us that we are not at war with Islam but terrorists who have hijacked Islam, writes Malik, it is crucial that we know the reality of life in the Islamic world, “a reality steeped in antagonism and violence.”

Malik, while cautioning that there are many variations of Islam and, therefore, diversity among Muslims, notes that “a remarkable degree of uniformity is apparent among Islamic portraits of 'the other’” (non-Muslims). “Since Islam does not separate the realms of religion and politics, peculiar ingredients in the religion bear directly on the behavior of non-Muslims under Islamic rule,” he adds. “Taken together, these ingredients create a perception of the alien ‘other’ that becomes a handy excuse for violence and persecution.”

Presented as a collection of essays, each with accompanying commentary by world-renowned experts and scholars, The Influence of Faith brings together in-demand intellectuals like Arthur Waldron, Samuel Huntington, Daniel Pipes, Robert Kagan, Norman Ornstein and George Weigel, among others.

At the end of his introduction, Elliott Abrams writes: “The intersection of religion and world politics has often been a bloody crossroads.

If tomorrow it is to become the locus of a principled struggle for freedom and human dignity, we will require imaginative thinking and careful research.”

Tomorrow is here. Abrams' prescient Influence of Faith isn't a bad handbook to have.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is executive editor of www.nationalreview.com