Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (40502)	8/28/2002 12:57:23 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

This may not be CB's favorite moment but I agree with her characterization. I don't think she's charging you with changing arguments. Rather, that the speed with which you move from Al Q did this, to "radical Muslims" are at fault, to something is wrong with Muslim culture, suggests you see 9-11 as the fault of the Muslim religion rather than the act of a some oddballs. suggests you see 9-11 as the fault of the Muslim religion rather than the act of a some oddballs. Not the Muslim religion, John. The term "radical Muslims" refers to the political movement of Islamism, not the Muslim religion as a whole. But while Islamism is a minority movement, it is not, repeat not, the province of a "few oddballs". It has far, far too many adherents in too many places for that characterization. It took over Afghanistan and Pakistan is iffy. The Shia variant took over Iran and funds the guerilla armies of Hizbullah. It has plunged Algeria into civil war. The Saudi princes have made a Faustian bargain that involves proselytizing for it over the whole Ummah. Al Qaeda is just one branch of a far larger collection of radicals with widespread support. The rest of the Arab world will indeed need to wage a civil war if they are to avoid being ruled by these lunatics, but there is little sign of the fight so far. This fundamentalism is a modern backlash (Pipes says that it is heavily influenced by totalitarianism) occasioned by the Arab world's abject failure to modernize or to come to terms with (even to admit, really) the nature of the modern world. In this sense there is definitely something wrong with the Arab world (and it's Arab, with Persian participation, not Muslim -- we can leave Turks or Indian and Malaysian Muslims out of this discussion). But that is going to be their civil war, if they decide to fight it, not ours.