You are not alone is this belief. I have thought this often. Some of the posts about carpet bombing Iraq and killing entire villages of Iraqis in reprisal for a GI killed are just so outrageous that I think they are trolls. But then you check the sign up date of some of these posters and they have been here for a year at least or more. Occasionally you catch a troll. But with so many Freepers acting as if they would have gleefully served in a mobile killing unit of the SS then I have to wonder.
==================
..... Militant Islam, or Islamism, political Islam, fundamentalist Islam is another such (totalitarian) movement, and it also has its origins in the 1920s. It is likely seen as an Islamic version of these totalitarian movements. It was not strong enough to take over a government until fifty years later in Iran in 1979.
At the heart of it lies the law of Islam, Sheriat. The idea that if you live by the law of the Sheriat in its exactness and if you apply it to all aspects of life you will then become rich and strong. My guess is that 10-15 % of Muslim populations around the world support militant Islam. The recent Turkish example would seem to confirm that. Though small in number they are very active, very devoted. The bad news is that 10-15% of a billion people is 100-150 million people. The good news is that it is still a relatively small minority. It is a global force, in addition to it, it has taken over several governments like mentioned. It is a central opposition force in such countries like Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan. Perhaps most dismaying has been how only in the last five years or so it has become a very significant force in such huge and distant countries from the Middle East as Nigeria, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Between them they have more than 1/3 of Muslim world population and have become radicalized in recent years.
It is, of course, also present in the West. For West is attractive for the Islamists. They live around people affluent, law abiding, have respect for religion, who do not really understand militant Islam. So what one has seen throughout the West is the militant Islamic institutions that dominate. Who does the media turn to? Who does the White House invite? It is the representatives of militant Islam. The same takes place in Canada, Western Europe and to a certain extent in Latin America. They dominate the discussion of Islam. They also engage in fund rising and to some extent in controlling terrorist movements in the Middle East. I believe the internal threat of militant Islam is as great to us as Americans as the external threat. Hostile relations with the West have been there from the beginning. They only became important in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. At that point militant Islam in effect declared war on us. They see themselves as surrounded by the West, as defending themselves from the West, and they have been attacking us, in particular Americans. I count before Sept. 11, 800 fatalities in the course of militant Islamic attacks on Americans.
There is an ignorance of the ideological dimension that terrorism is the problem, not militant Islam. Militant Islam is deep, big, powerful, attractive. Officially we do not deal with that. We deal with Islamists. Yet beyond the violence lies ideas, to make people respond. Unless we deal with these ideas we cannot win. Also the policies have only somewhat changed. For example, while there are new regulations for immigration and that law enforcement can go into mosques, at the same time there is great hesitance for enforcing them. If one looks at something like airline security it is not a serious undertaking. Because it does not look for terrorists, does not look for militant Islamist. It looks for things, for guns, knives. This is not serious. I think if you ask the President what the goal of the war is, he will tell you and I will quote you ' we will continue until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.' I do not think that is a war goal. The war goal must be to defeat militant Islam.....
From Voice of Atatürk
========================
Islamism is the arch enemy of the human race today. It would behoove us to take Islamism at least as seriously as this author does and as the Turks do, who have been fighting these Islamist lunatics for eighty years now.