Ayaan Hirsi Ali via

It is the nature of genius that it can render obvious that which was previously unnoticed, much less understood. There is genius in Heretic, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s latest meditation on the confrontation between Islam and modernity.1

Ms. Hirsi Ali has previously explored the essential role of Islamic doctrine in catalyzing jihadist terror in two riveting memoirs, Infidel and Nomad. I can attest to the importance of her work. For over two decades, commencing with my stint as a federal prosecutor in terrorism cases and continuing as a national security analyst who studies Islamist ideology (also known as Islamic supremacism, radical Islam, political Islam, and similar coinages that strain to separate the belief system from its pathological manifestations), I’ve been consumed by the question of what causes Muslims to become terrorists.

Not anywhere close to all Muslims: only a small percentage of the approximately 1.6 billion Muslims who make up the worldwide ummah (the community of believers) partake in violent jihad. Nevertheless, even a small percentage (one analyst says three percent; Ms. Hirsi Ali reasonably suspects it is a good deal higher) yields tens of millions of potential terrorists in absolute terms. Muslims are thus patently overrepresented among the global terrorist population. Just as alarming, opinion polling shows significant support for terrorists among Muslims who would not themselves participate in jihadist activity. What causes these phenomena?

Here lies the genius of Heretic. Like most commentators