Zenster: [Teresita seems] to be casting this as a religious war. Nothing could be farther from the truth. While Islam is fighting a religious war—better known as jihad—it’s opponents are fighting for their very survival. This is the bottom line.

It seems to me that it only takes one side being motivated by religion for it to be a religious war. That’s because wars – any and all wars – are won by breaking your enemy’s will to keep fighting. If your enemy’s will to fight is fueled by religion, then you must either break the religion or subvert it to your own purpose.

That the secular West just “doesn’t do religious wars” puts us at a disadvantage, because to win such a war requires our societies to step well outside their comfort zones. To win a war against a religiously motivated enemy, it is not enough to win hearts and minds. We must also win souls. Short of converting Muslims out of Islam outright, this means somehow convincing Muslims that they can resist Islamic supremacist tyranny, or at least refrain from supporting or partaking in it, without risking eternal damnation by Allah for doing so.

Never mind the death sentence for apostasy that such a notion entails. It’s one thing for some kafir entity such as the U.S. to ask Muslims to risk their mortal coils for a greater purpose; quite another to ask them to risk their immortal souls. This is the disadvantage I mentioned, and it is large indeed, but clearly not insurmountable. The peoples of Iraq were willing to make this leap of faith by standing up to al Qaeda, al-Sadr and other supremacist tyrants. To the extent that this was encouraged/assisted by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, the U.S. is already effectively engaged in religious subversion for the purpose of winning a religious war.