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Terror Networks
The Islamists: A little soul-searching
2002-02-03
  • Time carries an interview with Egyptian fundamentalist Montasser El Zayat. Zayat says that bin Laden and Ayman El Zawahiri have left the Islamist movement in ruins. "He made us a chewable morsel of bread under America's jaws, to kill and fight us under the assumption that we are all terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. He led to the downfall of a country that used to offer refuge to Islamists who were on the run from their country. Governments started to chase individuals and groups that had nothing to do with violence... But bin Laden underestimated the strength of his enemy. They miscalculated, so they lost the Taliban and they lost Afghanistan."

    And what's going to happen now? "In the coming period we will purify the movement of what might encourage or initiate violent activities. But this process cannot be one-sided, it is strongly linked to the reevaluation in the positions of the governments. A balance has to be struck. If this movement is allowed to exist and to encourage the moderate elements from within it to express their views, then I am sure that the propagators of violence will find it very difficult to move."
    Will the coming days see the Islamic Purges? Will the gunnies and bombers start to disappear, one by one, never to be seen again? It's possible, but it will be a localized phenomenon. It probably won't happen in Israel/Palestine. The gunnies are still the boys with power there. It won't happen in Lebanon, for the same reasons, unless Syria decides to make it so. The stage may already be set in Kashmir with the resentment of the locals against the Afghan Talibs and the "Arabs." But Egypt and Saudi Arabia, representing respectively the brains and the pocketbook of the fundos, will be the ones to watch. If Egypt begins, Saudi Arabia may discretely follow.

    "I do not know how bin Laden reached this judgment that all Americans should be killed. This is really wrong and Islam does not condone that at all," Zayat says. What he really means is that bin Laden miscalculated on the same scale Saddam Hussein miscalculated in Kuwait. Right or wrong has no relevance to the terrorists mindset; it's replaced by useful and not useful. Declaring jihad against the strongest country in the world from a rathole like Afghanistan, and goading it to fury, was an act of apalling stupidity. Binny seems to have had some halfassed idea of being the leader of the Muslim side in a war between civilizations, but that's the identical mistake Saddam made.

    Now the "moderate" fundos (the ones who beat their own wives) will have to go down with the gunnies and the exploders and the blood-thirsty mullahs; or they'll have to purge the movement of the extremists, who aren't going to quietly begin decomposition. Will we see a fundo civil war?
    Aren't we having one already? How many of those Lutheran senators are Missouri Synod?
    Posted by nails_in_church_door 2/4/2002 8:39:50 PM
    • Posted by:Fred Pruitt

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