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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Politicians, businessmen, bureaucrats, pharmacists, police commander, TV journalist among Moroccan jihadists

Feb 28, 2008 9:21 am By Robert Spencer

This fact makes the LA Times scratch its venerable head in puzzlement. I mean, doesn’t everybody know that poverty causes terrorism, and only the desperate, uneducated and easily led join jihadist groups?

Of course, we have documented here for years that the opposite is the case, and just yesterday Saudi pseudoacademic shill John Esposito admitted it himself: “The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims.” But it never seems to get through to the clueless, indifferent, PC-addled mainstream media.

“Morocco’s unlikely group of terrorism suspects,” by Sebastian Rotella for the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Sr. Soph):

RABAT, MOROCCO — They are politicians and businessmen, bureaucrats and pharmacists, a police commander and a TV journalist.

Police arrested them and seized an arsenal in nationwide raids this month, the biggest crackdown in Morocco since suicide bombings killed 45 people, including the 12 bombers, in Casablanca five years ago. […]

The recently arrested alleged leader of the group was a well-off Moroccan immigrant in Belgium who is accused of financing his activity with multimillion-dollar hold-ups and committing assassinations in that European country dating back 20 years. Moroccan Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said in an interview that the group plotted to assassinate Cabinet ministers, military chiefs and Jewish leaders to destabilize this moderate Muslim nation. […]

“The leaders of this network had the opportunity to train in Afghanistan, to meet leaders of Al Qaeda, and to go to Algeria to train in [rural outposts] in 2005,” Benmoussa said.

Some aspects of the case against the suspects perplex analysts. The three politicians arrested belong to small parties that mix Islamist and leftist ideologies. Their defenders say they are moderates.

Their longtime ties to Shiite Muslim movements, including Hezbollah, may have been a factor in their arrests. Sunni Muslims are the majority here, but authorities worry about the danger of extremism among the small Shiite minority and sympathetic Sunni radicals.

Sunni and Western governments fear that the recent assassination of a Hezbollah military chief in Syria could foment Shiite-inspired violence around the world, says Abdellah Rami, an expert on Islam at the Moroccan Center for Social Studies.

But Rami sees contradictions in the official version alleging that the Moroccan group of suspects was influenced by both Sunni-led Al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah.

“I find it hard to believe that all these movements were mixed together in the same cell,” said Rami, who knows the jailed politicians. […]

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