Fighting Just ISIS May Not Be Enough

[Valin]

The Hudson Institute:

Husain Haqqani

Nov. 18 2015

 

President Obama’s professed desire to contain the Islamic State is unlikely to succeed without a serious effort by the West and its Muslim allies to question the ideology and steady stream of conspiracy theories that feeds Islamist terrorism. Given the global nature and regenerative capacity of Islamist movements, limited action against one group will only result in the birth of another.

 

The Islamic State emerged out of al-Qaeda’s ashes just as the Obama Administration was celebrating its successful efforts to locate and kill Osama bin Laden. Military action against IS, though necessary, will likely result in a new mutation, just as al-Qaeda evolved as a violent strain of political Islam preached by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

The West, led by the United States, won the Cold War because it confronted Communist beliefs in addition to restraining Soviet expansionism. But Western leaders—including all candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination for 2016—are reluctant to acknowledge that the West might be at war with radical Islam, out of concern for the prospect of unleashing a wave of bigotry against all Muslims.

 

But the falsified history and simplified explanations for Muslim decline that pass for discourse among Muslims has to be debunked if the West is to deny Islamists their raison d’être. The most practical way of denying further recruits to extremist Islamist groups is to systematically question and marginalize the outmoded theology of Islamic dominance at the heart of Islamist radicalism. A campaign to reject the dogma of Islamic supremacism would find many supporters among Muslims tired of the zealotry and self-righteousness of the Islamists.

 

(Snip)

 

 

Contemporary jihadis use modern means, including the internet and state-of-the-art weapons, to impose medieval beliefs in an effort to reclaim Islam’s global pre-eminence. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Egyptian founder, Hassan al-Banna, called upon Muslims “to regain their honor and superiority” in addition to recovering “their lost lands, their usurped regions and their occupied territories.”

 

While seeking honor or securing self-determination might be valid political objectives, the belief in the superiority of one’s community of believers only fosters fascism. Muslim countries have nosedived into turmoil, with the rise of those wanting to Islamize the modern world coming at the cost of those hoping to modernize the Muslim world.

 

There is a huge gap between the Islamist aspiration of dominating the world and the reality of the relatively poor political, economic, and educational status of Muslims in contemporary times. Muslims comprise 22 percent of the world’s population but account for only 7 percent of its economic output.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

 

TOS Won't Like This....And that's a real plus IMO

[Valin]