Bruce Thornton: An Honest Missive. Zawahiri boasts strategy for "victory of Islam."

victorhanson.com ^ | October 13, 2005 | Bruce Thornton

[Tolik]

The website of the Director of National Intelligence just published a letter from Al Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head-terrorist in Iraq. This document repays careful reading, for it explodes much of the received wisdom many people rely on in making sense of jihadist terror.

According to this standard interpretation, Islamic terror is the handiwork of a fanatic minority that has “highjacked” and distorted Islamic doctrine. These medieval throwbacks gain traction from the political autocracy and oppression that dominate the Muslim governments in the Middle East, regimes that cannot provide the freedom and prosperity that would eliminate the frustration and despair breeding terrorist violence. The leftist variation of this analysis lays the blame on Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and Western, particularly American, imperialist and colonialist misdeeds in the region. Either way, the underlying assumption is that jihadist terror is a sort of cultural neurosis arising in reaction to political or material circumstances. Thus the cure for the terrorist “disease” must be found in improving those circumstances: installing democratic governments or compelling Israel to surrender Judea and Samaria (aka the “occupied West Bank”) so that a Palestinian state can be created.

Zawahiri’s letter, however, offers little that squares with this received wisdom. Its shrewd analysis and careful argument are the signs not of a wild-eyed religious fanatic but of a thinker shaped by his religion’s history and spiritual imperatives. Indeed, Zawahiri is very clear about the traditional jihadist motivation, one that is not a mere reaction to Western misdeeds or a distortion of Islam, but rather squarely in its history and traditional values: the eventual triumph of the true faith over “atheism” and “polytheism,” the latter term code for Christianity.

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[Tolik]

victorhanson.com is a MUST EXCERPT website :^(

[Tolik]

Very Interesting!

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[Eagles6]

save

[Stentor]

Bump.

[hershey]

Wow! What a column...hope someone in the WH reads it.

[highlander_UW]

100% on target, and the exact reason why we can't let the Left gain control of this nation...they are Chamberlains at heart and will sell us out to the terrorists.

[DoctorMichael]

Wow! What a column...hope Chris Matthews, Michael Moore, the New York Times, Barabara Streisand, Cindy Sheehan, Gerhard Schroeder, the Weenies and Cowards in Socialist Spain, the LA Times, Martin Sheen reads it. [/sarcasm]

Bttt!!!!!!!!!!

[MEG33]

Hanson bump.

[The Great RJ]

Make no mistake, the Islamofacists want nothing less than an end to Western civilization and the creation of a global Islamic theocracy. Unfortunately the very tenets of their religion support this goal.

[Dark Skies]

...we refuse to name clearly the enemy: an Islamic faith that for centuries has killed, enslaved, plundered, ravaged, and conquered in the service of its arrogant assurance of its spiritual superiority.

Isn't the truth a beautiful thing to hear.

Yet the American left and even our President want to lecture muslims by telling them Islam is a peaceful religion. Muslims must privately laugh at our stupidity.

In the meantime, Islam continues its march to destiny. Eventually, it must be expunged from humanity or it will lead this world into the darkness of pure evil.

[redgolum]

We would be well served if all in government were required to take classes that study history in depth.

Islam is not a peaceful religion. For the earliest days it was based on conquest and forced conversion. Those times when it drifted away from that were times of relative unbelief.