Falluja shows the latest in a puzzling array of undefined labels as Islam is reduced to an ideological "-ism", writes Waleed Aly.
I have no idea why that’s the intro teaser to this piece, since Falluja is not mentioned even once in this article.
It also provides a useful rhetorical hook for Western political leaders who seek to portray the war on terrorism as an ideological war without root causes.
The root cause is that Islamists want all non-believers dead (the terrorist’s preference) or in dhimmitude (the “moderate” alternative offered by reformers, like Khaled Abou El Fadl).
But none of this prevented Daniel Pipes from branding El Fadl a "stealth Islamist" in the Middle East Quarterly this year. Abou El Fadl's most significant crimes appear to be his fidelity to Islamic jurisprudence, his condemnation of colonialism and its impact on the Muslim world.
Pipes' article about El Fadl is a lot more comprehensive and documented than Waleed Aly would lead you to believe. He challenges the West’s embrace of El Fadl as some sort of serious reformer of Islam:
With rare exceptions, Khaled Abou El Fadl's differences with the overt Islamists are those of style, not substance…The case of Abou El Fadl points to the challenge of how to discern Islamists who present themselves as moderates.
- Daniel Pipes
Perhaps a war on al-Qaeda would have been more coherent than a war on terrorism.
The fact that the term would have been completely inaccurate, given the nature of our declared war on all forms of international terrorism and the nations that harbor those involved, doesn’t really matter, apparently.
Instead, we are labouring in a fog of meaninglessness that makes it hard for the West to distinguish its enemies from its friends.
I’m having no difficulty in this area at all.
In other words, his advocacy of Shaariah law.
Sounds real moderate.
islam = terrorism
At least it has for the past thousand plus years or so.
hmmm...I agree..I think
I'll just keep using rat bas*ards
Doogle
"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about," said 20th-century linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.
Huh.
Seems the Arabic language must be awfully limiting then, considering the last 6 centuries.
I prefer the term "Islamonazis" because it is both more accurate, and easier to say.
There is a point to all this, and that is that totalitarians migrate to whatever ideology currently supports their political ambitions. Islam just happens to lack any antibodies against totalitarian ideas, and the Middle East just happens to enjoy wallowing in greviences rather than building its own future.
This arguement is heard frequently even at the Army War College and its all BS.
No one in the business of the "War on Terror" is confused about what they are doing and who they are trying to kill.
If anything our definition is too narrow...we should pursue the ideologues, logisiticans and financiers and kill them as quickly as the "Allah Akbar" screamers wielding weapons.
...Don't get wrapped around the words get wrapped around the mission.
Our "target set" is not well defined, so let's call it the "War on Terror" and tell the world who and what constitutes it and then set about killing them too.