A Religion of Violence--but Not Terrorism

The original title of this post was "Wahhabi Islam and Snake Handling." Alas, I have not come across any snake-handling imams. I just happened to be reading two little books at the same time: The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis and Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia by Dennis Covington. Despite vast differences of genre and topic, I noticed a thread connecting these two books. The short version: both Wahhabi extremism in Arabia and snake handling in Appalachia arose out of disenfranchised communities left in impoverished ruins thanks to the devastating effects of the modern industrial world. Both movements claim that they return to more ancient and purer versions of their respective faiths. Yet these reactions against and rejections of modernism are wholly new--as "reactionary" movements tend to be--and lack any precedent in the history of Islam or Christianity.

I put that post on the backburner while finishing Salvation on Sand Mountain (which, by the way, is fantastic) and never managed to come back to it. Wednesday's horrifying massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris brought Islamic terrorism back to the fore of my mind. The regrettable editorial response by National Review made me think more specifically of Bernard Lewis' The Crisis of Islam. What follows, then, is an adaptation and revision of my original, never completed piece--but with the snake handling dropped altogether. Before I get to the heart of Lewis' book, I want to focus for a moment on the National Review editorial that provided the impetus for coming back to the topic.