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

To: carranza2 who wrote (45378)	9/19/2002 8:00:17 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Well, let's keep this running for a bit. First, the sentence you quote from me about it being wrong to place Emerson alongside Kepel, if you finish the quote out you will see the point of that statement was your notion that to do so would lead to a refutation of Kepel. The rest of my reply is that there is an argument that can be made that the two are complementary, not oppositional. As for the Bosnia materials, my preface that it is hard to know what you mean by the first world is simply to say you can accept or reject the notion, up to you. You appear not to wish to argue with the notion that an Islamist attempt to gain control of the Bosnian Muslim community was thwarted. Kepel sees that as a major effort on behalf of the Islamist movement to move into Europe. Wright does as well in his New Yorker piece. I meant that as an illustration, not as his only effort. In fact, I had stored my copy away for a week or so because of other things, so now I've taken it off the shelf and note that, in the material I have yet to read is a chapter titled, "Osama bin Laden and the War Against the West," Chapter 13, goes from page 299-322. After a long bit of opening material, you find a subheading "Jihad against France" beginning on page 308, then another subheading on page 313 "Osama bin Laden, Apocalyptic Terrorist". Looks interesting. Check it out of your local library. Let's see the full citation is Gilles Kepel, Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, published by Harvard University Press, 2002. The book jacket lists Kepel as Professor of Middle East Studies at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. It's a serious book published by a serious publishing house. In point of fact, Islamism's growth in the mid90's was enormous in Europe and the First World. It did not wane at all. Alienation was and is the key to this aspect of Muslim radicalization. Have you not read the materials on the 9/11 bombers describing the process through which they became radicalized, mostly in Germany? Let me suggest, once again, since you think this is fact, take those sets of facts and put them alongside the facts that Kepel offers. And put them alongside the frame he offers. See what you get. And let us know. I, for one, would be extremely interested. As for the material on the 9-11 group, I've read a great deal of it but not even close to all of it. I think I know what you are talking about, the thesis they were radicalized in Europe. Perhaps so, perhaps not. I genuinely don't think that argument addresses Kepel's decline argument. As strange as I know that sounds to you. It definitely is more danger for those of us in the US but that danger could well come from the endgame, which could be quite long, rather than from a growing movement. C, Kepel is not, at least at this level of the endgame, necessarily arguing about how the sentiments in Arab countries might be changing. He is rather arguing about the ability of political movements to translate those sentiments into sufficient power to take state power. I repeat, again, I have no serious idea whether he is correct or not. But he offers an interesting argument in an interesting frame.