perception wrote:Good you found it----that is the point---the Islamic church must control the government as the Taliban did and they will never tolerate any other religion. That is why the fundamentalists want to take Islam back to the 14th century. That is why their form of Islam leaves no alternative but to fight to the death. If they can't convert you to Islam they will kill you. Period---end of point.
Now you can sleep well.
So - you established that there is a movement of political Islam that poses a serious threat to democracy and freedom in the world. Welcome to the club - I'm sure we were all aware of this already. But - this is the beginning of the question, really, not the end - it's where the questions actually get interesting. For the real issue here is: what do we do about it?
To answer that question means to first research what has given political Islam such upswing, lately - what are the roots of its current success? You can point to the fact, for example, that most Arab countries are ruled by corrupt, dictatorial cliques, and that therefore there is a great resentment waiting to be exploited among the common folk. A few decades ago, that would have provided opportunities to socialist movements, but since these have been practically eradicated by the regimes in question those past decades, the only political force left now to voice anything like "people power" is that of the fundamentalists. Compare Al-Jazeera - the only uncensored TV news in the region, always again bravely reporting on corruption and nepotism in the region's dictatorships, for example - but from a perspective leaning distinctly towards the fundamentalist.
That poses a tricky situation. You have to fight the fundamentalists, expose them for what they are, try to make clear that their seeming concern for the people is not genuine, that what they will bring is terror rather than freedom. But how can you credibly make that case from the West as long as you are propping up those very corrupt dictatorships with funds and arms? The longer you wait, the harder it becomes, because there will be a time when, if you do finally organise free elections, you can be sure the fundamentalists will win them with a landslide. Algeria showed this, when the FIS won back when the FLN tried to democratise the system.
Algeria also shows, however, that the strategy they turned to to prevent the FIS from taking over - blanket repression and persecution - only made things worse. Algeria is now a state of terror, with radicalised underground Muslim militants who show no shred of mercy anymore, while the renewed dictatorship on its part has spawned ruthless and shady militias that have killed more civilians than the FIS and its successors ever did.
Other elements figure into the rise of fundamentalism, too, of course. The Israel-Palestine conflict - which I'm sure Osama and his ilk don't personally give a sh!t about, yields ever new recruits for their movements. The US invasion of Iraq will, I believe, do the same - perhaps not so much in Iraq itself, where most will be relieved to be freed, but elsewhere in the region, where the invasion has reinforced fears about Western hegemony.
So basically, I agree with K: what is your point, exactly? If it is that we need to stop the tide of fundamentalism, well, that's obvious. If it is that we need to wage some kind of crusade against Islam, or that we just need to fight one war after another until we stamped out the danger, I'd say that'd be a bit naive. You need a doublestrategy. No co-operation with the fundamentalists themselves - while weeding out the features of current Arab regimes and Western-Arab relations that feed their support.
