I know that everyone, from George Bush to George Galloway thinks this is all some sort of West v. Moslems war. But maybe, what is really going on is a very confused civil war among Moslems in general (and Arab Moslems in particular) and we in the West (plus Israel) are just getting in the way. Consider the war as being between: Shia v. Sunni (Iraq) Arab Sunnis v. non-Arab Sunnis (Iraq and Darfur) Secular Moslems v. Religious Moslems (Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt) Qutbists v. Wahhabists (Saudi Arabia) Liberals v. authoritarians (to some extent, everywhere)
Exactly. And in a sense, what the leaders of the Moslem world (especially Saudi Arabia) seem to be trying to do is export their civil war to the West. After all, before 9/11, France was subject to a series of bomb attacks tied to Algerian terrorists. The bin Laden "Declaration of War" was in the 1990s. Bin Laden's real problem is that he saw us as propping up the Saudi government -- Iraq and the Palestinians are relatively recent concerns to him. Even the problems in Israel have an inter-Arab conflict flavor about them. I felt (and I know some commentators who actually know something about these things felt) that Arafat was encouraging the bombers as a way to deflect opposition to his regime. And in a sense it worked. Arafat died in a French hospital bed rather than at the end of a noose in Hebron. Even now, the battles between Hamas, Fatah, IJ and PFLP are taking place in the context of proving who can send more bombs into Israel. In some ways the battles among the Palestinians are a microcosim of the entire Moslem civil war. You have a small number of liberals fighting against authoritarianism. You have secular terrorists (like the PFLP) fighting religious terrorists (like Hamas and Islamic Jihad). You have various different types of religious terrorists fighting each other (Hamas seems somewhat Wahabbist inspired and while Fatah is ususal considered secular, it does have in its past a connection with the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, which is Qutbist inspired). The thing is a mess, and in the end, it is easier I guess for the Palestinians to kill Israelis rather than sort the mess out.
It's like any other organized religion: it forms, it breaks into sects, and those sects kill each other.
If only their gods had made them more efficient at it, we might be done with religion and ready to evolve some more by now
The terror attacks and conflicts in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Indonesia certainly support your point.
Right. They're just on different schedules. Western nations got smart the removing/reducing the church's influence in politics. The problem right now is that the state players don't have the power to do that so they play along.
The Islamic world is in a state of profound identity crisis due to the following reasons, in no particular order: 1) Corrupt dictatorial regimes 2) Post-colonial legacy problems similar to those of Africa 3) Humilation due to relative poverty and military impotency 4) Influence of the Western values that look more enticing than traditional ones 5) National identity issues Out of these issues comes a lot of social turmoil similar to the kind of internal turmoil that gave rise to fascism and communism in Europe last century. Al-Qaeda and Islamism is the symptom/outcome of such turmoil, it seeks whatever outlet it can find, be it Israel, the West, or local institutions. ...And this is why strong democratic Arab states would be beneficial.