(Fazi, Rome, 2003)
- Franco Cardini (Professor at the State University of Florence
War
is a deep, deranging reality, but it is also firmly and unavoidably human. To
seek, to challenge, to cause, to receive and to accept death is something too
high and stern – even when it is terrible and awful, even when it is unjust and
monstrous – to escape somehow the contact with holiness. Tessore deals with
this descensus ad Inferos which is also an ascensus ad Superos.
War is an element of man: it has been never alien to our history. The attempt, during
the XX century, to exorcize war definitively, caused its wild return: with the
aberration of the supertechnological war of the Superpower who claims to fight
it and to win it without losses, and with the terroristic war.
Therefore knowing the features or
war theology in the religions of Abraham and in the mythical-religious
traditional cultures will help us to disenchant modern and post-modern reality,
which, on the other hand, needs sanctification (...).
For this reason the book of Tessore
is an excellent landmark to put in order contemporary disorder.
- Le monde diplomatique (Dicember 2003) «Dag Tessore with his Mysticism of war sounds an inquiet and dreadful abyss. He
investigates the field -completely unusual for us and even unknown- of the most
profound motivations of those who fight in God's name [...]. It's important
that we understand, before we condemn. Our reactions against the armed
fundamentalists must be rooted in a real understanding of their reasons:
understand those who move war against the West, and why they do so [...]».
- Tagesspiegel (06-10-04) «What is it, that makes people to
die in God's or any other divinity's name? Dag Tessore is an Italian expert of
Islamistics, Church History, born in 1975. He analyses the texts of Ayatollah
Khomeini, Osama bin Laden, of the Samurais, of the Japan
- Il Corriere della sera (06-02-03)
«The book of
Dag Tessore enlightens -in a crucial period like ours- texts and
interpretations that have tried to justify and condεmn the war [...]. The war may also be "holy" and
"right", when it fights the Evil, the Heresies or other. Politics,
too, has accustomed us to talk about "unavoidable",
"defensive" wars, for peace and good» (Armando Torno).
- 3 SAT,
German Radio-Television (07-10-04) «The idea of
the holy war, military and spiritual, existed in almost all religions.
Religious personalities -some Popes themselves- have conducted the Holy war
against the faithless. The Mysticism of
war written by Dag Tessore is published in Germany
- Il Giornale (22-02-03) «With
The Mysticism of war Dag Tessore, very
provocatively but with open-minded historical lucidity, invites us to explore
the most profond deepnesses of the christian mind and the most obscure recesses
of the faith. In this way he shows the incredible likeness between the
sanctification of the war elaborated by the Church from the fisrt centuries
(and matured in the Middle ages with the great doctrine of St. Augustine and
St. Thomas) and the islamic Jihad [...]».
- Letture (May 2003) «Tessore,
in his Mysticism of war, prefaced by
Professor Franco Cardini, introduces us to a very burning subject, the
spirituality of the weapons, not only in Islam but even in Christianity,
devoting a part to the "martial" theology also of other cultures»
(Gianfranco Ravasi) .
- Avvenire (19-02-03) «Dag
Tessore is an expert of Orientalistic studies, specialized in Church history,
Christian Theology and Islamistics. This book deals with holy war [...].
According to the Author, Osama Bin Laden, Hamas, Hezbollah should be studied by
the point of view of their world, which also presents spiritual roots [...]».
- Avanguardia (March 2003) «Dag
Tessore, The Mysticism of war: [...]
The Holy war for the Christians, the Jihad for the Muslims. The Christianity,
differently of what the today hierarchies say, has never been a pacific
religion, not at all [...]».
- RAI 1,
Italian Radio (28-02-03) «The book of Tessore is worthwhile an important notice. The Mysticism of war is an eccentric
book».
Other articles and reviews have been
published in:
Giornale
di Sicilia, 04-05-03; Il Sole 24 ore, 16-02-03; La Liberazione , 14-02-03;
Avvenire, 14-03-03; Rocca,
01-02-03; Studi Cattolici, May 2003; Der
Rheinische Merkur (28-11-04).
Many other reviews have been
published also in Hungary , China and Iran
