How should the Western world today respond to the challenges of political Islam? Taking an original approach to answer this question, Confronting Political Islam compares Islamism's struggle with secularism to other prolonged ideological clashes in Western history. By examining the past conflicts that have torn Europe and the Americas--and been supported by underground networks, fomented radicalism and revolution, and triggered foreign interventions and international conflicts--John Owen draws six major lessons to demonstrate that much of what we think about political Islam is wrong. Looking at the history of the Western world itself and the fraught questions over how societies should be ordered, Confronting Political Islam upends some of the conventional wisdom about the current upheavals in the Muslim world.