Shaking Hands with the Devil: The Intersection of Terrorism and Theology
by William J. Abraham
Highland Loch Press, Dallas. 180 pages.
I doubt this book will be very popular. It’s much too honest about the most pressing problems facing the world community. The title itself tips off the author’s main concern. Having grown up in Northern Ireland and experiencing threats against his own life for resisting the IRA, Abraham is no stranger to terrorists acts. “My interest in terrorism stems directly from living with it one way or another all my life.” His language sharply and deliberately removes all obfuscation around the theological challenge of terrorism. “Terrorism,” Abraham writes, “is nasty business. [It] is simply the use of violence against innocent people for political purposes; it is the massacre of the innocents for political gain.” He contends that it is critically important to analyze the theological foundations of the Islamist movements behind the recent worldwide attacks. Religion — and specifically theology — played a part in the violence of Northern Ire- land; similarly they play an important part in the current Islamist threats. We must examine the theology carefully without moral flinching or obfuscation. For “if we take the challenge of Jesus Christ seriously, then terrorism is not a reason to challenge God; it is an occasion to find God hanging on a cross and to find there mercy and hope for ourselves, for our enemies, and for the world.”
