12-05-2008, 09:08 PM
Dec 5, 2008
<b>Ending Islamic terrorism â Challenges and Opportunities</b>
from: Kalyan Viswanathan
date: Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:56 PM
The terrorist attack executed in Mumbai in a commando style operation, reminiscent of 9/11 was executed after careful planning, preparation, training and ideological conditioning. It was not the work of some disgruntled elements, who took law into their own hands, and went on a shooting spree. They had visited Mumbai before, familiarized themselves with the targets, and intensely prepared for the sea voyage and the subsequent attack. We could say that a new batch of terrorists had been graduated from âTerrorism Schoolâ, and they had come to Mumbai for their first real life practice mission. But how was this Terrorism School created in the first place? We have to go back a little in history.
The infrastructure for Terrorism - A little history
The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in the year 1979, to support the Marxist Peopleâs Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was in power at the time. This was itself part of the âCold Warâ fought between the US and the Soviet Union, for many decades. Months before the Soviet Union intervened, the US had been secretly providing aid to the Mujahideen rebels, in an effort to bring down the Communist Party in power at the time. To quote Zbigniew Brzezinski, Defense Secretary to President Jimmy Carter, from an interview he gave to the Le Nouvel Observateur, in 1998 he said :
âWe didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.â
Zbigniew Brzezenski
As part of the CIA Program called âOperation Cycloneâ the intense arming and militarization of the Mujahideen started sometime in the second half of 1979, authorized by President Jimmy Carter, and continued unabated until 1989. Several nations including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia among others were active participants in creating the pipeline, which delivered both the weapons and the young Muslim recruits for this secretive militarization of the Mujahideen. Osama Bin Laden was himself one such recruit.
The Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev brought an end to the domination of the Communist ideology, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall in August 1989, and the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1989, Gorbachev also completed a unilateral withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Afghanistan, bringing and end to the 10 year war with the Mujahideens. But while the war ended, the infrastructure that had been created for the training and arming of the Mujahideen has remained largely intact even to this say, almost 20 years later. No one took responsibility for the dismantling of this infrastructure which became the Terrorism School from which new batches of terrorists have been graduated and sent on deadly missions all around the world. 9/11 was a product of this same âTerrorism Schoolâ from which came the group called Al Qaeda.
The US bears a great responsibility in destroying and eliminating this Terrorism infrastructure which it left behind in Pakistan and Afghanistan at the end of the War in Afghanistan. However the infrastructure is only one ingredient which goes into the creation of this deadly product called Terrorism. There is a second ingredient, for which the US is not responsible at all - the ideology behind terrorism, which the US failed completely to anticipate when it first set up this infrastructure.
The ideology behind Terrorism
By now it is also very clear that the terrorist attack in Mumbai was planned and executed by the Laskar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure) which was founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed based in Pakistan â the same year when the US proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan ended. Incidentally, the launch of terrorism through insurgencies in Kashmir, also began in the same year in 1989, resulting in thousands of lives being lost. What is the Laskar-e-Taiba and what does it stand for? We turn to the words of Hussein Haqqani, the current Ambassador (2008) of Pakistan to the USA. He says in an article he wrote for the Hudson Institute in 2005 :
âLashkar-e-Taiba has adopted a maximalist agenda for global jihad though its operations so far have been limited to Kashmir. The group justifies its ideology on the basis of the Quranic verse that says, âYou are obligated to fight even though it is something you do not likeâ (2:216). Extrapolating from this verse, the group asserts that military jihad is a religious obligation for all Muslims. The group then defines the many circumstances in which that obligation must be carried out.
For example, a Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad publication titled Hum Jihad kyun Kar rahe hain? (Why Are We Waging Jihad?), declares the United States, Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam. It lists eight reasons for Jihad:
1) To eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;
2) To ensure the ascendancy of Islam;
3) To force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);
4) To assist the weak and powerless;
5) To avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;
6) To punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;
7) To defend a Muslim state; and
8) To liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupationâ
-- Hussein Haqqani
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The ideology explained above is not unique to the Laskar-e-Taiba. This ideology is shared by many Islamic radical groups, including the Al Qaeda, the Students Islamic Movement of India, Hamas, Hezbollah and many others with diverse names, around the world. Thus the infrastructure created to arm the Mujahideen in its war against the Soviet Union, has been co-opted by this Islamic supremacist ideology, launching the numerous terrorist brands that have since come into being.
The confluence of Ideology and Infrastructure
Global Jihad inc. is thereby sustained by this happy confluence of ideology and infrastructure, and to this day, almost twenty years after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war is able to graduate yet another batch of young terrorists, armed with lethal firepower, and the willingness to die on a suicide mission, while causing maximum damage. This combination is what produced 9/11 in the US, the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) from the Kashmir valley in Jammu and Kashmir, numerous terrorist attacks in India and elsewhere, including the latest Mumbai attacks.
To end this terrible disease that humanity has now caught, called Islamic terrorism, two things have to happen. One, the infrastructure must be completely dismantled. Second, the ideology must be completely repudiated. This then is the most urgent mission on the planet, today. The USA, Israel and India, the so called three existential threats to Islam, (Read Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism) have to join together in this mission to completely dismantle the infrastructure within the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. And the Islamic world itself has to completely repudiate the ideology that breeds and sanctions violence against innocent civilians, merely because they are guilty of being non-Muslim i.e. Christian, Jewish, Hindu or some other Non-Muslim faith.
The obstacles to ending terror
But all of this is easier said than done. First of all, Politicians in the US, India and Isreal, have to come to terms with the fact that this is a common enemy, and they must work together in ending terrorism. This may be the easy part. However, the hard part requires persuading Pakistan that it should actually be interested in destroying this infrastructure and ideology. Unfortunately, Pakistan is not a single unitary entity and has a variety of State and Non-State actors within it, with varying degrees of proximity to this terrorist infrastructure. The Civilian Government of Pakistan, has a vested interest in playing on both sides of the terror game â i.e. through the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Armed Services, it may actually be supporting and maintaining this infrastructure for political purposes. This terrorism infrastructure has enabled successive Pakistani governments to sustain a low grade insurgency based war against India and Afghanistan, on the one hand, while on the other, it has also generated a lot of financial assistance from the US, in the name of being a principal ally in the war on terror. However, Pakistan may still be persuaded to join in as a partner, in this effort to clean up the infrastructure that got created between 1979 to 1989, through proper diplomatic efforts between the US and India. Even if this happens, it remains a question, as to how much influence the Government of Pakistan actually exercises over the ISI and its Army, not to mention the various non-state actors such as the Taliban, the Mujahideen and the Al Qaeda, all of which have regrouped in the border areas, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while the US distracted itself with a war in Iran, under the pretext of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
The ideology of Islamic terrorism poses problems of a completely different scale and magnitude. There are many verses in the Koran that not only sanction violence against Kafirs (Infidels or Non-believers) but actually demand it as a religious duty. The Hadith and the Sira, actually make Muhammadâs life an example to be emulated and this leads straight to the 7th century Jihad of Islam against the Non-Mulsim world. Muhammadâs numerous Ghazi raids against the caravans of Mecca, which he launched from Medina represents the medieval prototype on which the modern terrorist attack is modeled. Osama Bin Ladin is simply emulating Muhammadâs life, and waging Jihad in the best recommended way, by his holy books. It is irrelevant, that there are other Muslim Scholars in various countries and universities who can provide a benign interpretation of the same verses in the Koran. What matters is that the terrorists are interpreting the same verses in a manner that provides the ideological framework for their actions. So, it is very difficult to fight and destroy the ideology of Islamic terrorism, without to some extent, appearing to challenge Islam itself â And here is where the greatest difficulty lies.
Denouncing Islamic terrorism without denouncing Islam itself
Islam does not like to be criticized or challenged. In fact, the simple act of criticizing the Prophet Mohammed, brought a Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and an attempt on his life in London. Theo Van Gogh was murdered for making a film called Submission, and numerous threats including an Import boycott have been issued by the Organization of Islamic Countries against the Netherlands for the publication of the now famous cartoons.
Which brings us to the crux of the problem â how do we repudiate the ideology behind Islamic terrorism, without appearing to denounce Islam itself? Most of the world, has categorized Islam in the âThought categoryâ of a religion (like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism etc.) and therefore the world goes out of the way to accommodate Islam as a religion. What modern scholarship has singularly ignored is that Islam is also a Political ideology (like Nazism, Fascism and Communism etc.) that seeks political space and dominance, as much as it is a religion. The intellectuals and academicians of the world have failed to study Islam as a political ideology, because of its very convenient religious camouflage. It could be said of the three existential enemies of Islam â the Christians and Hindus have completely failed to understand the nature of Islam. The Jews do have a better handle on this, because of their extremely precarious situation in the Middle East, where they are completely surrounded by Islam and Terrorism.
Moderate Muslims and Islamic Terrorism
<b>Another naive way of categorizing Muslims is the two black and white categories called "Radicals" and "Moderates". Once we do this, we can easily assert that the actual number of Jihadis is probably .0001 % and all the rest are 'moderate' and therefore 'innocent'. This is the typical liberal minded position that most of us take in a well-intentioned manner. The reality however is more subtle. Islamic political agenda has always been set by the radicals. The so called moderates amongst Islam can be generally grouped into the following categories.
1. Those who will not themselves wage Jihad directly by taking arms or weapons - but nevertheless support Jihad, by donations, logistical support, manpower and other kinds of ways.
2. Those who will neither take arms nor support the Jihadis, but nevertheless agree with the Jihadis, and generally sympathize with their efforts.
3. Those who will not take arms, nor support nor sympathize - but they don't really care one way or another - because it does not affect them personally. This group tends to worry more about the fallout of the terrorist attacks on their own reputation and lifestyles.
4. Those who actually disagree with the Jihadis, and are uncomfortable with the Jihadi ideology, but are too scared to raise a voice, for fear of retribution within their community.
5. Those who actually disagree with the Jihadis, and are so passionate in their disagreement, that they actually raise their voice and say something or do something - such as standing for reform within Islam.</b>
Now while it is difficult to say what percentage of the so called Moderate Muslims - fit in which bucket above, when it comes to the last bucket - i.e. the moderates who really speak up against the radicals - and try to contain them - i.e. the only moderates who really count, can be counted on our fingers. This then is the core issue : Is Islam going to come to terms with a pluralistic world, in which the co-existence of people of many different religions can be affirmed and sustained or is Islam going to secretly nurture its hopes and ambitions of one day, dominating the world, and becoming the only religion of all mankind. If Muslims are going to situate themselves on both sides of this issue, as can be expected of them â then we have a long and arduous road ahead. If however, the moderate Muslims can be weaned away from its core supremacist ideology, and can be encouraged to speak up and exert themselves, they can form a natural coalition partner to the countries of the USA, Israel and India â in this existential struggle to stamp out the menace of Islamic terrorism. However, this will require them to be courageous and make a clean intellectual break from some aspects of Islam, which feed the Islamist supremacist ideology.
The signs of an internal renaissance within Islam are almost bleak and non-existent, which makes this a difficult war. In the mean time, we have to be satisfied with taking out the infrastructure, again and again. We can be sure though that the underlying ideology, will recreate the infrastructure again and again as well. This is the new âCold Warâ. In this war there are two targets. One is the infrastructure. It has to be taken down again and again. Second is the ideology. This has to be taken on frontally, with sufficient clarity, and with adequate international support. Otherwise we will be reduced to watching out for the next terrorist attack, and occasionally being able to pre-empt an attack and catch a few terrorists.
http://vivekajyoti.blogspot.com/
<b>Ending Islamic terrorism â Challenges and Opportunities</b>
from: Kalyan Viswanathan
date: Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 5:56 PM
The terrorist attack executed in Mumbai in a commando style operation, reminiscent of 9/11 was executed after careful planning, preparation, training and ideological conditioning. It was not the work of some disgruntled elements, who took law into their own hands, and went on a shooting spree. They had visited Mumbai before, familiarized themselves with the targets, and intensely prepared for the sea voyage and the subsequent attack. We could say that a new batch of terrorists had been graduated from âTerrorism Schoolâ, and they had come to Mumbai for their first real life practice mission. But how was this Terrorism School created in the first place? We have to go back a little in history.
The infrastructure for Terrorism - A little history
The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan in the year 1979, to support the Marxist Peopleâs Democratic Party of Afghanistan, which was in power at the time. This was itself part of the âCold Warâ fought between the US and the Soviet Union, for many decades. Months before the Soviet Union intervened, the US had been secretly providing aid to the Mujahideen rebels, in an effort to bring down the Communist Party in power at the time. To quote Zbigniew Brzezinski, Defense Secretary to President Jimmy Carter, from an interview he gave to the Le Nouvel Observateur, in 1998 he said :
âWe didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap...The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.â
Zbigniew Brzezenski
As part of the CIA Program called âOperation Cycloneâ the intense arming and militarization of the Mujahideen started sometime in the second half of 1979, authorized by President Jimmy Carter, and continued unabated until 1989. Several nations including Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia among others were active participants in creating the pipeline, which delivered both the weapons and the young Muslim recruits for this secretive militarization of the Mujahideen. Osama Bin Laden was himself one such recruit.
The Perestroika of Mikhail Gorbachev brought an end to the domination of the Communist ideology, resulting in the fall of the Berlin Wall in August 1989, and the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1989, Gorbachev also completed a unilateral withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Afghanistan, bringing and end to the 10 year war with the Mujahideens. But while the war ended, the infrastructure that had been created for the training and arming of the Mujahideen has remained largely intact even to this say, almost 20 years later. No one took responsibility for the dismantling of this infrastructure which became the Terrorism School from which new batches of terrorists have been graduated and sent on deadly missions all around the world. 9/11 was a product of this same âTerrorism Schoolâ from which came the group called Al Qaeda.
The US bears a great responsibility in destroying and eliminating this Terrorism infrastructure which it left behind in Pakistan and Afghanistan at the end of the War in Afghanistan. However the infrastructure is only one ingredient which goes into the creation of this deadly product called Terrorism. There is a second ingredient, for which the US is not responsible at all - the ideology behind terrorism, which the US failed completely to anticipate when it first set up this infrastructure.
The ideology behind Terrorism
By now it is also very clear that the terrorist attack in Mumbai was planned and executed by the Laskar-e-Taiba (The Army of the Pure) which was founded in 1989 by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed based in Pakistan â the same year when the US proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan ended. Incidentally, the launch of terrorism through insurgencies in Kashmir, also began in the same year in 1989, resulting in thousands of lives being lost. What is the Laskar-e-Taiba and what does it stand for? We turn to the words of Hussein Haqqani, the current Ambassador (2008) of Pakistan to the USA. He says in an article he wrote for the Hudson Institute in 2005 :
âLashkar-e-Taiba has adopted a maximalist agenda for global jihad though its operations so far have been limited to Kashmir. The group justifies its ideology on the basis of the Quranic verse that says, âYou are obligated to fight even though it is something you do not likeâ (2:216). Extrapolating from this verse, the group asserts that military jihad is a religious obligation for all Muslims. The group then defines the many circumstances in which that obligation must be carried out.
For example, a Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad publication titled Hum Jihad kyun Kar rahe hain? (Why Are We Waging Jihad?), declares the United States, Israel and India as existential enemies of Islam. It lists eight reasons for Jihad:
1) To eliminate evil and facilitate conversion to and practice of Islam;
2) To ensure the ascendancy of Islam;
3) To force non-Muslims to pay jizya (poll tax, paid by non-Muslims for protection from a Muslim ruler);
4) To assist the weak and powerless;
5) To avenge the blood of Muslims killed by unbelievers;
6) To punish enemies for breaking promises and treaties;
7) To defend a Muslim state; and
8) To liberate Muslim territories under non-Muslim occupationâ
-- Hussein Haqqani
<!--[if !supportLists]-->
The ideology explained above is not unique to the Laskar-e-Taiba. This ideology is shared by many Islamic radical groups, including the Al Qaeda, the Students Islamic Movement of India, Hamas, Hezbollah and many others with diverse names, around the world. Thus the infrastructure created to arm the Mujahideen in its war against the Soviet Union, has been co-opted by this Islamic supremacist ideology, launching the numerous terrorist brands that have since come into being.
The confluence of Ideology and Infrastructure
Global Jihad inc. is thereby sustained by this happy confluence of ideology and infrastructure, and to this day, almost twenty years after the end of the Soviet-Afghan war is able to graduate yet another batch of young terrorists, armed with lethal firepower, and the willingness to die on a suicide mission, while causing maximum damage. This combination is what produced 9/11 in the US, the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus) from the Kashmir valley in Jammu and Kashmir, numerous terrorist attacks in India and elsewhere, including the latest Mumbai attacks.
To end this terrible disease that humanity has now caught, called Islamic terrorism, two things have to happen. One, the infrastructure must be completely dismantled. Second, the ideology must be completely repudiated. This then is the most urgent mission on the planet, today. The USA, Israel and India, the so called three existential threats to Islam, (Read Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism) have to join together in this mission to completely dismantle the infrastructure within the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. And the Islamic world itself has to completely repudiate the ideology that breeds and sanctions violence against innocent civilians, merely because they are guilty of being non-Muslim i.e. Christian, Jewish, Hindu or some other Non-Muslim faith.
The obstacles to ending terror
But all of this is easier said than done. First of all, Politicians in the US, India and Isreal, have to come to terms with the fact that this is a common enemy, and they must work together in ending terrorism. This may be the easy part. However, the hard part requires persuading Pakistan that it should actually be interested in destroying this infrastructure and ideology. Unfortunately, Pakistan is not a single unitary entity and has a variety of State and Non-State actors within it, with varying degrees of proximity to this terrorist infrastructure. The Civilian Government of Pakistan, has a vested interest in playing on both sides of the terror game â i.e. through the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Armed Services, it may actually be supporting and maintaining this infrastructure for political purposes. This terrorism infrastructure has enabled successive Pakistani governments to sustain a low grade insurgency based war against India and Afghanistan, on the one hand, while on the other, it has also generated a lot of financial assistance from the US, in the name of being a principal ally in the war on terror. However, Pakistan may still be persuaded to join in as a partner, in this effort to clean up the infrastructure that got created between 1979 to 1989, through proper diplomatic efforts between the US and India. Even if this happens, it remains a question, as to how much influence the Government of Pakistan actually exercises over the ISI and its Army, not to mention the various non-state actors such as the Taliban, the Mujahideen and the Al Qaeda, all of which have regrouped in the border areas, between Pakistan and Afghanistan, while the US distracted itself with a war in Iran, under the pretext of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
The ideology of Islamic terrorism poses problems of a completely different scale and magnitude. There are many verses in the Koran that not only sanction violence against Kafirs (Infidels or Non-believers) but actually demand it as a religious duty. The Hadith and the Sira, actually make Muhammadâs life an example to be emulated and this leads straight to the 7th century Jihad of Islam against the Non-Mulsim world. Muhammadâs numerous Ghazi raids against the caravans of Mecca, which he launched from Medina represents the medieval prototype on which the modern terrorist attack is modeled. Osama Bin Ladin is simply emulating Muhammadâs life, and waging Jihad in the best recommended way, by his holy books. It is irrelevant, that there are other Muslim Scholars in various countries and universities who can provide a benign interpretation of the same verses in the Koran. What matters is that the terrorists are interpreting the same verses in a manner that provides the ideological framework for their actions. So, it is very difficult to fight and destroy the ideology of Islamic terrorism, without to some extent, appearing to challenge Islam itself â And here is where the greatest difficulty lies.
Denouncing Islamic terrorism without denouncing Islam itself
Islam does not like to be criticized or challenged. In fact, the simple act of criticizing the Prophet Mohammed, brought a Fatwa against Salman Rushdie, and an attempt on his life in London. Theo Van Gogh was murdered for making a film called Submission, and numerous threats including an Import boycott have been issued by the Organization of Islamic Countries against the Netherlands for the publication of the now famous cartoons.
Which brings us to the crux of the problem â how do we repudiate the ideology behind Islamic terrorism, without appearing to denounce Islam itself? Most of the world, has categorized Islam in the âThought categoryâ of a religion (like Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism etc.) and therefore the world goes out of the way to accommodate Islam as a religion. What modern scholarship has singularly ignored is that Islam is also a Political ideology (like Nazism, Fascism and Communism etc.) that seeks political space and dominance, as much as it is a religion. The intellectuals and academicians of the world have failed to study Islam as a political ideology, because of its very convenient religious camouflage. It could be said of the three existential enemies of Islam â the Christians and Hindus have completely failed to understand the nature of Islam. The Jews do have a better handle on this, because of their extremely precarious situation in the Middle East, where they are completely surrounded by Islam and Terrorism.
Moderate Muslims and Islamic Terrorism
<b>Another naive way of categorizing Muslims is the two black and white categories called "Radicals" and "Moderates". Once we do this, we can easily assert that the actual number of Jihadis is probably .0001 % and all the rest are 'moderate' and therefore 'innocent'. This is the typical liberal minded position that most of us take in a well-intentioned manner. The reality however is more subtle. Islamic political agenda has always been set by the radicals. The so called moderates amongst Islam can be generally grouped into the following categories.
1. Those who will not themselves wage Jihad directly by taking arms or weapons - but nevertheless support Jihad, by donations, logistical support, manpower and other kinds of ways.
2. Those who will neither take arms nor support the Jihadis, but nevertheless agree with the Jihadis, and generally sympathize with their efforts.
3. Those who will not take arms, nor support nor sympathize - but they don't really care one way or another - because it does not affect them personally. This group tends to worry more about the fallout of the terrorist attacks on their own reputation and lifestyles.
4. Those who actually disagree with the Jihadis, and are uncomfortable with the Jihadi ideology, but are too scared to raise a voice, for fear of retribution within their community.
5. Those who actually disagree with the Jihadis, and are so passionate in their disagreement, that they actually raise their voice and say something or do something - such as standing for reform within Islam.</b>
Now while it is difficult to say what percentage of the so called Moderate Muslims - fit in which bucket above, when it comes to the last bucket - i.e. the moderates who really speak up against the radicals - and try to contain them - i.e. the only moderates who really count, can be counted on our fingers. This then is the core issue : Is Islam going to come to terms with a pluralistic world, in which the co-existence of people of many different religions can be affirmed and sustained or is Islam going to secretly nurture its hopes and ambitions of one day, dominating the world, and becoming the only religion of all mankind. If Muslims are going to situate themselves on both sides of this issue, as can be expected of them â then we have a long and arduous road ahead. If however, the moderate Muslims can be weaned away from its core supremacist ideology, and can be encouraged to speak up and exert themselves, they can form a natural coalition partner to the countries of the USA, Israel and India â in this existential struggle to stamp out the menace of Islamic terrorism. However, this will require them to be courageous and make a clean intellectual break from some aspects of Islam, which feed the Islamist supremacist ideology.
The signs of an internal renaissance within Islam are almost bleak and non-existent, which makes this a difficult war. In the mean time, we have to be satisfied with taking out the infrastructure, again and again. We can be sure though that the underlying ideology, will recreate the infrastructure again and again as well. This is the new âCold Warâ. In this war there are two targets. One is the infrastructure. It has to be taken down again and again. Second is the ideology. This has to be taken on frontally, with sufficient clarity, and with adequate international support. Otherwise we will be reduced to watching out for the next terrorist attack, and occasionally being able to pre-empt an attack and catch a few terrorists.
http://vivekajyoti.blogspot.com/