One Hand Clapping

Al Qaeda’s primary war is against other Muslims
The Muslim Civil War is the most important struggle in the world today
I started yesterday to write a post about how the Muslim world is embroiled in a civil war just as much as the US is fighting the terror war. After all, no one was surprised that al Qaeda would car-bomb a synagogue, which it did in Istanbul last week. It was a savage act, but quite in accordance with al Qaeda’s longstanding hatred of Jews everywhere. But the attacks there against British insitutions killed or wounded scores more Turkish Muslims than Britons.

My point is that al Qaeda is killing other Muslims at least as frequently as it kills non-Muslims. But at least three other bloggers had the same thought at the same time, and beat me to the post. (I guess I have more real work to do than they do!) Anyway, see Citizen Smash, Phil Carter and Polipundit for excellent thoughts.

It is not at all clear that the Muslim world is itself awake to the implications of this fact. I have maintained all along (see here, for example) that this war is indeed a religious war. Al Qaeda’s objectives are religious objectives, the restoration of the Islamic caliphate and the practice of pure Islamism, as they determine it, in the Arab countries.

Hence, they want to do two things :

expel Western non-Muslims from Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries,

emplace their brand of Islamism in the societies

But how can Muslims make war on other Muslims when it is prohibited in the Quran? The same way that Christians in Europe killed one another over religion during the religious internecine wars of Europe that occurred regularly from the 16th to 17th centuries. If you see yourself as the defenders of the true faith, then you exclude from the faith the other side.

What the blasts yesterday in Istanbul and the other attacks going back years that killed Muslims show is that al Qaeda excludes most of the world’s Muslims from the umbrella of protection afforded by the Quran. Either al Qaeda considers them apostate or heretical Muslims, thus not truly Muslims, thus permissible to kill, or al Qaeda considers collateral deaths permissible in the furtherance of its aims. Or both, in some way.

Al Qaeda’s war is not only against the West; in fact, I say that they are not even principally fighting against the West. Their primary war is against other Muslims. What is at stake are lives, human freedom and the very definition of Islam itself.

As I pointed out in August 2002, the Muslim world is faced with defining what Islam really is. If al Qaeda is not in fact the keeper of the true faith, then the rest of the Muslims must unite to destroy al Qaeda just to ensure the survival of Islam itself. They need to understand that the present crisis is not primarily that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not toe their line.

by Donald Sensing, 11/21/2003 10:12:49 AM. Permalink |

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