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Let's Fight Wars on Earth, Not in HeavenHow to define, and avoid, a cosmic war.

By Alan WolfeUpdated Monday, April 13, 2009, at 6:56 AM ET

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Aslan's tendency to emphasize the worst carries over into the way he understands the interaction between religion and politics. It is true that religion brings to politics a language and activism that make compromise more difficult and violence more likely. But it is just as true that political involvement brings to religion a sense of responsibility and a trend toward moderation. (The best example comes from Turkey, where the governing AKP, once a radical Islamic movement, has become a cautious governing party.) So while Aslan is quite right to suggest that "the boundaries between religion and politics are, in all parts of the world, becoming increasingly blurred," the fact that they are mitigates as well as promotes global cosmic war.

The same, by the way, is true of globalization. On the one hand, the global spread of technology and the breakdown of national borders intensify religious and political conflict; just think of right-wing Jews from Brooklyn, N.Y., living on land once occupied by Palestinians or jihadists spreading their messages of hate through the Internet. Yet globalization also increases wealth around the world, thereby undermining religious fervor. China, the fastest-growing country in the world, is not engaged in a cosmic war with anyone; it is seeking, quite successfully, to use its wealth for global advantage. Similarly, while India experienced a recent terror attack, the increasing wealth of the country has been accompanied by a decline in the fortunes of that country's Hindu nationalist party, the BJP. The truth is that peace will come between India and its neighbor Pakistan when both become too globalized to allow their religious differences to disrupt manufacturing and trade.

Even a little bit of cosmic war, however, is still too much, and Aslan's suggestions for cooling down the temperature, if not especially original, point in the right direction. I agree with him that the most important step the Obama administration could take to reduce global religious fervor is to help negotiate a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine problem (although any such step would no doubt increase the cosmic war being fought by ultra-Orthodox Jews). The efforts already taking place in Europe to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, much as he suggests, could be expanded.

Aslan's most passionately argued suggestion is more controversial. After a scathing denunciation of the Bush administration's hypocrisy in urging the spread of democracy while cooperating with authoritarian regimes, he nonetheless concludes that "President Bush was right: Only through genuine democratic reform can the appeal of extremist groups be undermined and the tide of Muslim militancy stemmed." Alas the evidence so far suggests that in the short-term, as we saw with Hamas' electoral victory in Gaza, democracy and extremism can go together. It may prove to be the case that democracy, because it brings radical groups from the fringes into positions of power, will prove successful in toning down cosmic rhetoric in the long run. But this requires patience as steps backward occur before steps forward can be taken.

Religion, nationalism, politics—any one of these forces alone is capable of producing more than its share of death and destruction. Combine them, and the possibility of events spiraling out of control increases that much more. No wonder, then, that our instinct is to separate them from one another as much as possible, whether it is by drawing sharp lines between church and state or by creating states, like the former Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, that contain many nations. But it may not be possible to engage in such separation anywhere and everywhere: Multiethnic states collapsed in Eastern Europe, and the American model of church-state separation is not applicable to all. We need an alternative, then, some way that these powerful forces can be combined that stops short of cosmic war. I am not completely persuaded by Aslan that religious nationalism is the best alternative to religious war; after all, even Aslan himself recognizes just how extreme religious nationalism has become in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Still, finding some ways in which we can accept the power of religious identity while stopping short of cosmic war is Aslan's ultimate objective, and his book asks all the important questions. We cannot prevent wars. But he is right that we should realize that they are best fought on earth rather than in heaven.