Author Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., a renowned political philosopher, discusses the difficulty that Europeans and Americans have in recognizing that resurgent Islamic militancy is not just caused by "terrorists", as if terrorism were some kind of independent movement or mind-set. Violence has a source. No one undertakes it without a cause that is worth, in his mind, the risk of death.
Islam is unique in its description of the world within itself, which is to live peacefully by the law of Allah, and the world outside this sphere, which is at war with Islam. The main concern of the author is the abiding existence of Islam over time and its constancy in attempting to achieve the goal of worldwide submission to Allah as a political and cultural fact.
James V. Schall, S.J., was a Professor of Political Philosophy from 1977 to 2012 at Georgetown University, where he received his Ph.D. in Political Th eory in 1960. Three times he was granted the Award for Faculty Excellence by the senior class at Georgetown’s College of Arts and Sciences. He wrote hundreds of essays and columns and more than thirty books, including On Islam, The Order of Things, and Another Sort of Learning from Ignatius Press.