[saleman]

Awwww, there are Muslim terrorist's in other countries? I thought the religion of peace was only fighting a jihad against American imperialism.

This is what happens when you appease or turn a blind eye to these heathen, racist, bigoted thugs. Sorry folks, these goat humping killers are not going to leave you alone. You can join the war on terror,just give up and convert, or die.

[USF]

Ultra-Radical Muslims Draw Scrutiny.... In 1995, an alleged Takfir gunman attacked bin Laden's compound in Sudan.

I'm waiting for the ultraradical-fundamentalist-islamist-extremist-Muslims to come along and wipe the Takfir out.

That will teach those liberal Takfirs!

[lotusblos]

We could end the violent behavior of these nuts by initiating a policy of arming our troops with bullets dipped in pig blood and burying the parts of suicide bombers in pig crap. Their beliefs are intense enough for them to perform these incredibly inhuman acts. It should be real easy to use their beliefs to control them.

[SauronOfMordor]

I disagree with the authors translation.

Takfir is generally translated as "departure from Islamic practices", usually in the sense of ceasing to be a Muslim

Hijira literally means "journey". The Qur’an uses the word Hijra to mean moving from a bad place or state of affairs to a good one

Since one of the main tactics of the group is to stop performing Islamic practices in order to better blend into non-Muslim societies, and not attract attention, an alternate translation of al-Takfir wa al-Hijra would be

Undercover infiltration

[JasonC]

Takfir is not a group, it is an accusation. The practice of calling other Muslims that aren't "true blue" enough, apostates from Islam, is in Egypt known as "calling Takfir". It means those who loosely sling around the charge of apostacy against any who aren't fundamentalist Muslims. It is, in particular, the denunciation the fundies level against pro western Muslim governments, or even ones just considered less than fundamentalist.

The actual intellectual roots of this go back to Ibn Tayymia in the Islamic middle ages. He introduced a particularly bigoted form of Islam, meant as a political weapon of rebellion. Everyone is instantly classified into the servants of Allah, which is limited to bigoted Koran literalists who accept everything the fundies say, and everybody else, who is a servant of the devil. Subtle distinctions between pagans and peoples of the book, injunctions not to condemn other Muslims, traditions about how little is required to be considered a believing one, etc - all right out the window. Literalist, or damned. It was, incidentally, an outlaw position even in the middle ages (its proposer died in prison, condemned for heresy).

But it is not the title of a group. Modern fundies have intellectual origins going back that far, but politically they trace back to groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in the 1920s. The article is pretty scatterbrained on the subject. It reads like some Dutch liberals asked Egyptian government supporters who the enemy was, and completely misunderstood the response. They would appear to only have the category of "sect" to work with, confusing even that with a political party.