Not in God's Name

How is it that in 2015 a supposedly civilized Europe is left speechless by ISIS’s medieval cruelty?   Where have religious extremists sprung from and why does their cause appeal to the many people who fight for them (some of whom come from England)?   What is to be done about it and what will happen if we fail to engage with these issues?
Dr Sacks’ timely book addresses all these issues and offers both a searching analysis and hope.
Readers may find it helpful to read section 3, which offers practical insights, first and then to read sections 1 and 2 which offer the theory which underpins part 3.
This is an important book and I hope it is widely read.
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Some quotations to whet your appetite….

“To paraphrase Kierkegaard:’When a king dies, his power ends. When a prophet dies, his influence begins’ “(p236). I hope this is proved wrong by this book becoming influential in Dr Sack’s lifetime.

“Above all; never seek revenge. Do not believe you can rectify the past by avenging it. That way you merely succeed in perpetuating the past instead of healing it”(p 245)

“Faith is God’s call to see his trace in the face of the Other. But that needs a theology of the Other, which is what I offer in this book” (page 25)

“Science, technology, the free market and the liberal democratic state have enabled us to reach unprecedented achievements in knowledge, freedom, life expectancy and affluence.  They are among the greatest achievements of human civilisation and are to be defended and cherished.  But they do not and cannot answer the three questions every reflective individual will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?  These are questions to which the answer is prescriptive not descriptive, substantive not procedural.  The result is that the twenty-first century has left us with a maximum of choice and minimum of meaning.” (p 13)

“What printing was to the Reformation, the Internet is to radical political Islam, turning it into a global force capable of inciting terror and winning recruits throughout the world.  The extremists have understood that in many ways religion was made for the twenty-first century.  It is a more global force than national states.  Religious radicals use the new electronic media with greater sophistication than their secular counterparts.  And they have developed organisational structures to fit our time”  (p 17).  (Time that the religious non radicals wised up and used the potential of the new electronic media and adapted their organisational structures to fit 2015 methinks).

“The contemporary West is the most individualistic era of all time.  Its central values are in ethics, autonomy; in politics, individual rights; in culture, post-modernism; and in religion ‘spirituality’.  Its idol is the self, its icon the ‘selfie’, and its operating systems the free market and the post-ideological, managerial liberal democratic state.  In place of communities we have flash-mobs.  We are no longer pilgrims but tourists.  We no longer know who we are or why.” (p41).  This critique is apt.