The New Republic shares this naivete with many, many analysts in the West. From "Dangerous naivety" in The Spectator, May 28 (thanks to Mick):
The New Republic has published an article by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank which claims that al Qaeda is unravelling because former supporters are turning against it, and that as a result Muslim moderates are on the march against the jihadis. While there is undoubtedly some truth in their argument, in that – as we can see in Iraq – the mass killings of Muslims by al Qaeda are clearly turning increasing numbers of Muslims against it, the authors’ apparent naivety and ignorance have nevertheless led them to some dangerously wrong conclusions, particularly in their analysis of what is happening in Britain.They have fallen into the trap of believing that the only extremists are al Qaeda and others who support terrorism in Britain. They thus extol as moderates those who oppose al Qaeda and terrorism in Britain. But this view – which is shared by many in British security circles, alas -- presents an entirely false and indeed lethal dichotomy. For there are Islamists who oppose al Qaeda and terrorist action in the UK as a tactical mistake but nevertheless subscribe to the same strategic goal – to restore the medieval Caliphate, overturn British and western society and institute the rule of Islam instead.
Precisely.
Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria expressed the same theme in this week's issue: Islamist terrorist attacks have declined 65 percent. In Pakistan's North-West Frontier province, support for Osama bin Laden has plummeted from 70 percent in August 2007 to 4 percent in January 2008.
The problem with these soothing statistics is that they fly in the face of the daily terrorist incident reports. With a $25 million bounty on OBL's head, you'd think that someone in that 96% of the people who now oppose him would tell the NATO troops where he's hiding.
I think Bergen and Cruickshank should check out "Jihad Fatima" just below.
If a Muslim doesn't want to restore the medieval caliphate and institute the rule of Islam everywhere, including Britain and all other western societies, he's not a good Muslim. If he does want the caliphate restored and Sharia everywhere, he can't possibly be a loyal citizen of any western nation. That's why it is impossible to be a loyal American and a devout Muslim at one and the same time. It's that simple.
The New Republic shares this naivete with many, many analysts in the West.
-RS
And with many leaders in the West as well.
George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown immediately come to mind. They do their best to distinguish between the jihadist of the pen (like the woman in JW today) and the jihadist of the sword, refusing to admit that, in Islam, the war of ideas and the war of the sword have the same goal. Where have they been for the last thirty years? Have any of them seen what has become of Iran and Lebanon?
Maybe, just maybe, the New Republic could read the Qur'an as a part of its research.
Fareed Zakaria does not have that excuse.
Robert, you are right on. I read this original article that the NEW REPUBLIC references; I found this statement in the article to be most telling: "Most of these clerics and former militants [who oppose Al-Qaeda], of course, have not suddenly switched to particularly progressive forms of Islam or fallen in love with the United States (all those we talked to saw the Iraqi insurgency as a defensive jihad), but their anti-Al Qaeda positions are making Americans safer."
The word "anti-Jihad" is being flung about, but clearly those who have decided, for various reason, not to participate or, in some cases, to support those who do participate in violent Jihad, do so for various reasons, and those reasons are not necessarily cause of Infidel delight.
The Afghans allied with Al Qaeda used to complain about how arrogantly "the Arabs" ordered them about, and some were no doubt so offended that they left. It is not impossible that the Arabs of Al Qaeda have been treating some of the Pakistanis with similar contempt.
There are those Muslims who, while they may approve of attacks on Infidels, nonetheless have decided at this moment in history, the Infidels are too strong, and their counter-attacks too damaging.
There are those Muslims who, living deep behind what they regard or at least have been taught to regard as enemy lines, in the Bilad al-kufr, who may worry about the effect of their participation in terrorist attacks, or even the effect of such attacks without their participation, and out of not moral abhorrence, but calculations of Muslim self-interest, have decided not to participate in or support, at least domestically, violent Jihad.
But the word "anti-Jihad" misrepresents the views of such people. There are many ways to conduct Jihad, many instruments of Jihad other than combat or qitaal (which is how Muslims would define what we have no trouble seeing as "terrorism"), and the most important of these instruments, as long as the Infidels remain militarily superior, are the Money Weapon (to pay for mosques, madrasas, propaganda, armies of Western hirelings to serve as apologists), campaigns of Da'wa and, especially, demographic conquest.
People who are against terrorism may be against it for various reasons. And Muslims who are against terrorism may well be busily occupied in employing the other instruments of Jihad.
The Muslimah in Belgium, whose husband killed Massoud, and who lives off of the Belgian taxpayers, smack in the middle of Brussels, where she is monitored by the police but nonetheless on-line (apparently, she has a divine right to uninterrupted Internet access that must not be tampered with by the Belgian security services) is able to whip up other muslimahs to, in turn, whip up their menfolk to go off on Jihad -- violent Jihad. Well, that too, as the woman in question recognizes, is a form of Jihad.
A Muslim who declares himself against Al Qaeda does not automatically, thereby, become any less of an enemy of the Infidels. It may merely mean that you are a cleverer and more dangerous enemy of the Infidels.
The Chinese Communists, once partners with Stalin, split off and went "against" the Soviet Union at a point in history.
This did not then make them any safer for the West.
Jihadists who come into conflict with Al-Qaeda's crude methods may thus be more dangerous to the West.
By being more cunning.