How a Neocon Found the Catholic Church

There is a famous Persian proverb, Sokuni be-dast ar ey by sabât, ke bar sang-e ?altân na-ruyad nabât, which translates to something close to “a rolling stone gathers no moss.” As a conservative and traditionalist Catholic, I find that sentiment quite appealing and true to life. Yet there are exceptions, among them the Iranian-American Sohrab Ahmari. The popular writer at Commentary and former editorialist at The Wall Street Journal has rolled quite quickly in his relatively short life, from Shia Islam to Nietzschean nihilism, from Marxism to neoconservativism. Now, in his spiritual biography, From Fire by Water, Ahmari charts his intellectual travels into Catholicism, to which he converted in 2016. For the reading list alone, Ahmari's apologia is a valuable resource for understanding the intellectual evolution of the West and how traditional religious belief still offers the best answers to man's quest for truth.