How the Iraq War United Radical Islam
Islam expert Michael Sells analyzes global Islam in light of the Madrid bombings.
... It seems to be another act of an organized anti-Western group that has shifted now from the jihad of the Taliban centered around Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to an international war against what is viewed as Western occupation.
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But there are some of those teachings that have helped galvanize these groups and have helped form their ideology. Other teachings come from the Egyptian Islamic brotherhood. And these writings have been combined with some of the Saudi Salafi militant writings to form a view that only this one version of Islam is the correct version of Islam. All other versions of Islam are heretical and should be fought, and Christianity and Judaism are inherently threatening, and Muslims should have as little contact with them as possible, and a jihad in a military sense should be carried out against any group that is threatening the purity of this form of Islam.
Radical Salafism is based on a particular reading of the Medieval writer Ibn Taymiyya, who wrote after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols. He viewed non-Salafi Muslims, and Christians, and Jews, as allies of the Mongols and as threats to the security and purity of Islam. And he was particularly angered by Mongols who had invaded Islam and said they had converted, but who weren't, in his view true converts. The latest radical view of Islam sees a [new] threat of occupation by outside forces. ...It sees the West as occupying Islam, so it views them the way Ibn Taymiyya viewed the Mongols.
When they talk about people coming into Iraq from Syria and Iran and fighting Americans, these were not specific organized groups. They were young men who felt very strongly that there was a war going on against Islam, and an occupation, and they went to fight it. The groups that have been effective in organizing themselves are these radical Sunni Salafi groups. The movement existed, and it was probably expanding anyway...
All these things are going on simultaneously. And I think it's crucial to understand that they are going on simultaneously, and that if the United States expands its operations in the Middle East, I think it's absolutely predictable that there will be groups that are going to rise up in opposition to that.
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But when people feel that their identity in whatever religious tradition they're part of is being actively threatened, conflict-oriented religion tends to have a strong appeal because it mobilizes people, gives people a sense of purpose, a sense of mission, a sense of unity against what is considered to be a threat.
My concern is that you have a vicious cycle, with the more terror events there are, the more the West gets anti-Islamic, and the more the West carries out large military campaigns with bombings and occupations, the more sense of conflict that brings, and the more appeal conflict-oriented versions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have
Militant religions think carefully about this aspect of war in which the actual physical damage to the enemy is minimal, but the damage gets into the minds of people.
http://www.beliefnet.com
2005-07-29
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