Weekly Think Piece ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Former British Jihadist Gets It Right
This is one of the best and simplest analysis of why average Muslims from a "broad spectrum' of society (tongue in cheek) wants to blow themselves and other around them to bits. A former British Jihadist explains it in two simple steps. According to Hassan Butts, a former jihadist, blaming Islamic terrorism on the government (the West) for the actions of Islamic terrorists is highly misplaced blame, and only serves to help the terrorists - who laugh in celebration over the free propaganda in their behalf by those that they seek to terrorize. More importantly, he believes that blaming the West and its foreign policy only serves to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of the violence of radical Islam: Islamic theology: Whoa!! You mean it IS the ideology after all? And though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice. If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal? How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel. Not the existence of Israel? Not NATO troops in Afghanistan? Not US Troops in Iraq? Not US foreign policy?
For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war. But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).
Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.
There it is. Straight from a former Jihadist's mouth.
For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?" But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology. The theology of Islam can lead to Islamism and that's what it's doing today. Until we face up to the fact that we are fighting an ideology and not some criminals in a cave somewhere, we will not be able to mount an effective defense, let alone an effective offense. |
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