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[Nat Turner]

MAJOR BUMP! ! !

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[x]

It's certainly true that in the Arab countries, former Leninist Communists have gravitated to Islamism, as have former Arab Nationalists. It's also true that the Western left has a soft spot for some of the attitudes of Islamism. But was Marx himself anti-Western? Didn't he see Western imperialism as preparing the way for the eventual revolution? Today's Islamists pick up where the previous generation of Communists and terrorists left off, but Marx himself looked at things very differently and probably wouldn't have thought much of them.

[Lessismore]

As far as I can tell, the Islamic radicals are not Marxist or Communist influenced to any significant extent. The primary roots of Al Qaeda are in Wahhabism, the extreme religous fundamentalism of the southern part of the Arabian penninsula, and in Deobandism, a religious reaction against British colonialism and Hindu domination in India.

Muslims who are influenced by communist and socialist thought, such as the Ba'ath party of Syria and Iraq, tend to be secular, westernizning regimes. In fact, the Ba'ath Party was founded by a Muslim and a Catholic in Syria as a secular socialist modern alternative to the nationalist religous medieval conditions that had existed under the Ottoman empire.

[tjg]

Great post.

[Destro]

All true, but al-Qaeda and Osama have their origins as organs of American anti-communisim in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia is the West's bastard child too.

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Maoist International Movement... check out the "special section opposing the US war in Afghanistan."

[dennisw]

If you want on or off me Israel/MidEast/Islamic Jihad ping list please let me know.  Via Freepmail is best way.............

[dennisw]

The violent history of America before the arrival of Europeans can be read in the skeletal remains of victims of massacre, scalping, dismemberment, and even cannibalism. In other words, Indians were like every other people on the planet: willing to use violence in the grim competition for resources.

Many times American Indians did not go to war over scarce resources. Often it was for greater glory, for rape, for acquiring another wife to make more babies for your tribe so your tribe increases and becomes more powerful. For kidnapping the children of the other tribe to raise in your own tribe as your own so your tribe gets larger, more powerful. 

War for the sake of war and for the sport of it. War for bloodlust
Some tribes were more warrior oriented than others.
Many Islamics have this same warrior outlook on life.

[2sheep]

Communists and Islamic Extremists - Then and Now
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 8, 2002 | Stephen Schwartz