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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (124561)	5/23/2008 7:00:14 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Radical Islamicists, at least in modern times, got their start in the 1960s. An idealistic Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb went to school in America and was shocked by what he saw and considered decadent. When he went home he became convinced that his own culture was suffering from contageous effects of western decadence and began to preach about purification. He was tortured by the secular government and the result was a move from Idealist to Radical, calling for the death of the corrupt leaders of Islamic nations. He was executed but had managed to garner a significant following. An Egyptian physician was impressed by his puritanical preaching and began to preach the same idealism. He was tortured also and became radicalized as a result of that torture. His name is Ayman al-Zawahiri and he became the head of what we came to call Al-Qaeda. He convinced Osama Bin Laudin to throw his funding behind the Radical cause in Afghanistan. Osama had not been a radical before this, in fact in his early life he was known to be something of a playboy. This created a great deal of conflict between Afghani groups and his group partly because his group was focused on something different than the Afghan cause and partly because they were mostly foreigners who had originally been recruited to help fight the Soviets. The recruitment was partly to blame. Lots of fighters had been funded by their own people and told they must go to Afghanistan for the sake of Islam. Most probably didn't know what Afganistan was but they believed they were doing a good thing for Islam. There they taught the radical message and way of life to multitudes in training camps and Madrassas. Additional funding poured in from diverse sources and this actually became institutionalized for a while. They were emboldened by the defeat of the Soviets and told to return to their countries and for the same cause, recruit followers, kill government leaders who collaborated with democracies, and foment rebellion until all Islamic lands were following their purified version of the Religious teaching. Bush and Cheney came in to the picture well after the movement had gained momentum.