To trust in one’s rational faculty means to question and to endure doubt. Sometimes the fear of doubt can be stronger than the fear of death, when extreme doubt leads someone to be receptive to the extreme certainty of a violent ideology – the most fashionable of which (though by no means the only one) is currently radical Islamism. The attraction of radical Islamism is similar to the psycho- logical appeal of other secular totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, in that it dispels all doubt. In the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, ideology often took the place of religion.
