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Old 03-19-2004, 20:44   #13
Airbornelawyer
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No offense, but if your criterion is that a country is not against Islamist terrorism if any of its citizens are Islamist terrorists, then add the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, China, Russia, Australia, Georgia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Kenya, Spain and Sweden.

The core of al-Qa'ida recruiting has been among Gulf Arabs, but the point of al-Qa'ida was to build ties to Islamists, usually adherents of the Salafi or Wahhabi schools, throughout the dar al-islam, from the Philippines to Algeria, and into the dar al-harb. It was to be the base of a hydra-headed network of terrorists. So naturally you are going to find recruits among any Muslim population. But that really doesn't answer the question.

As far I am concerned, we are at war with a political ideology (and its adherents) which some have termed Islamofascism. Most Islamofascist movements are themselves offshoots of other fundamentalist or revivalist movements in Islam, such as Wahhabism. Many don't even like each other - a Wahhabi like Osama bin Laden would consider a Shi'ite Hizbullah member to be an apostate. But that doesn't matter anymore than it mattered that Hitler probably secretly thought Mussolini was an Untermensch. And cooperation of Islamists with secularists like the Ba'athists of Syria and Iraq or the Communists of North Korea doesn't change this either. And, as in World War Two, where we gave Spanish fascists a pass, a war against Islamofascism doesn't require fighting every Islamist group everywhere. Tactical considerations can come into play.

That said, while from our perspective our war is against Islamofascism, it is up to Muslims to decide whether it is a war against Islam, by choosing sides. Despite the "you're either with us or against us" rhetoric, most Muslims seem to not want to take sides. The terrorists haven't exactly enjoyed a recruiting boost as a result of OEF, the vaunted "Arab street" has been quieter than Detroit after a Stanley Cup win, and every government of a country with a Muslim population denounced the 9-11 attacks. On the other side of the equation, anti-American and anti-Western sentiment is rampant and governments have done little to quell it (and in many cases have fanned the flames), many Muslims do perceive the West as being at war with Islam, and political and religious leaders have done little to engage in the debate over the future of their religion, letting the Islamofascists define the nature of the conflict.
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