Interesting parallel although unhelpful. "Radical Islam" is a phenomenon of historical continuity. It wasn't created as a phenomenon because of concurrent processes. Islam began with the sword and expanded at an unrelenting pace as Jihad not merely as militaristic and geo-political expansionism but as an intrinsic religious concept based on the Koran. There is no basis to suggest that "radical Islam" is an anomaly.
And I wish to God that Islam or a significant portion of it and its adherents would have moved to a Liberation Theology phenomenological expression. The fact that this was an outgrowth of panentheistic (or process philosophy re Whitehead and Hartshorne)thought on Catholic theology indicates that the West and Christendom was open to influences and reform (for better or worse). The same is not true in large part of Islam (remember that Bernard Lewsi quote?).
I understand your point on radical Islam.
However, when I'm talking about communist repression and terror "under cover of Islam", it's not some vague notion -- that's just the facts. They weren't exactly covert about it until 1991.
The beauty of both prongs -- undermining Christianity and co-opting radical Islam -- is that they do indeed capitalize perfectly on the raw material at hand.
And, had "radical Islam" truly enjoyed a unbroken continuity, I doubt very seriously it would have needed the organizing, training, sponsorship and continued support of Soviet and Chinese communists.
It's like pretending the IRA suddenly pulled itself up by its own bootstraps when, in actuality, it was just a matter of the Soviets' finally appreciating and electing to control the potential for an IRA contribution to World Revolution.
I know we're going to disagree here, but I truly think the confection of Israel was a calculated move in many respects. It's easy to see why the West's Oligarchs were interested in a "sustainable" geopolitical toehold in the shifting sands of the Middle East. Shoot, made 'em look almost moral overnight despite their take on WWII's slave labor, the personal effects of MILLIONS and the dividends of war which inevitably land in the pockets of those alert always to the opportunity to turn a profit on human suffering.
It's the Soviet sponsorship of some of the Zionists that bugs the hell out of me. Surely they were bent on having a most magnificent means of focusing the Middle East (and the world, for that matter, given Uncle Sam's having drawn sole babysitting duty in perpetuity).
It's like some hypnotist's gem swinging in front of the wholly disparate and -- by all appearances -- defeated factions of Islam throughout the region. With the right amount of turmoil and baiting (thanks to Soviet sock puppets like Arafat), one could pretty much use Israel to control relations between the US and the OPEC barons, even.
(Though just outright siding with them, as Putin did the other day, is always good for laughs and lends a certain aura of "power" to the princes.)