Debating the War of Ideas

ERIC D. PATTERSON Ph.D. is Assistant Director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs as well as Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University, USA.     JOHN P. GALLGAHER is Director in the Office of Iraq and Afghanistan Affairs at the National Security Council, where he previously served as a 2007-2008 White House Fellow.

"This book is a major contribution to our understanding of what is at stake in current conflicts between the West and Islamist extremism. From a variety of viewpoints - many of them controversial - the contributors to this volume display in equal measure the barriers to, and possibilities for, dialogue. This important book assists us in evaluating where we have been and where we are going." - Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Sovereignty: God, State and Self (her Gifford Lectures, 2008) "Debating the War of Ideas is a welcome contribution to the raging debate in this country and overseas about the rise of religion as a policy driver in the behavior of states and non-state actors.The book brings together for the first time a collection of essays spanning the entire ideological spectrum among academic experts on the nature of the war of ideas among and between religions and religion-based cultures and offers useful strategies suggestions to our policymakers on how to engage different religions, cultures, and civil society institutions rooted in religion." - Emile Nakhleh, author of A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World

• Debating the War of Ideas; J.Gallagher  & E.Patterson Jihadism's War of Ideas; W.Phares 'Dangerous Concepts' and the Struggle Within: Reclaiming State and Politics from the Islamists; M.Nawaz Sharing With Equals: Modernity, Fundamentalism, and the Future; K.Armstrong Conceptualizing the Islamist Threat: War and Deceit; R.Ibrahim Debates over Just War and Jihad: Ideas, Interpretations, and Implications Across Cultures; J.Turner Johnson The Clash of Interpretations; A.Meddeb , translated by C.Mandell The Clash of Civilizations?; A.Ahmed Debating Absolutism and Pluralism in Contemporary Islam; A.Afsaruddin Democracy, Religious Freedom, and the War of Ideas; E.Patterson Inter-civilizational Conflict between Value Systems and Concepts of Order: Exploring the Islamic Humanist Potential for a Peace of Ideas; B.Tibi   The War of Ideas as Therapy: Reflections on a Eureka Moment in the 'War on Terror'; A.El-Affendi Waging Trans-Epistemological Warfare; J.M.Brachman Counter-radicalization and Europe's New Security Dilemma; L.Vidino The Struggle for Islamism in the Levant: The Case of Northern Lebanon; B.Rougier Dissonance and Denial: U.S. Foreign Policy and the War of Ideas; R.Spencer