From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Sat Aug 24 2002 - 19:16:35 MDT
At War With Whom?
A short history of radical Islam
by Jonathan Schanzer
Doublethink
Spring 2002
There's a "War on Terror" going on, says President George W.
Bush. Sometimes we're even told it's a war against "evil." But
regardless of nomenclature, the Bush administration takes great
pains to emphasize that this is most certainly not a war on Islam.
Is it?
The short answer is "no." We're not battling Islam, because there
is no such thing as one Islam. One Islam cannot be extracted from
the numerous offshoots, branches, and sects that make the world's
1.3 billion Muslims as ideologically, religiously, and politically
fractured as the other two monotheistic faiths, Christianity and
Judaism.
Still, all of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Muslims.
Every one of the FBI's 22 most wanted terrorists are Muslims.
Nearly all the groups and individuals listed in President Bush's
executive order blocking terrorist funds were Muslims, too. So
how is this not a war on Islam?
Correction: Militant Islam
The "War on Terror" should really be called the "War on Militant
Islam." The terrorists of September 11, Osama bin Laden, al-
Qaeda, and the Taliban all adhere to an ideology we have come to
know as militant Islam, a minority outgrowth of the faith that
exudes a bitter hatred for Western ideas, including capitalism,
individualism, and consumerism. It rejects the West and much
that it has to offer (with the exception of weapons, medicines, and
other useful technologies) seeking instead to implement a strict
interpretation of the Koran (Islam's holy book) and shari'a (Islamic
law). America, as radical Muslims see it, is the primary
impediment to building an Islamic world order.
Accordingly, militant Islam directs its venom towards America
and the West. The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad
Omar, said after September 11 that "the plan [to destroy America]
is going ahead and God willing it is being implemented, but it is a
huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings. If
God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of
time."
Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, a Palestinian Mufti (Islamic religious
authority) said in a radio sermon broadcast in 1997, "Oh Allah,
destroy America, her agents, and her allies! Cast them into their
own traps, and cover the White House with black!"
"The American regime is the enemy of [Iran's] Islamic
government and our revolution," said Iran's religious leader, Ali
Khameine'i, in 1998. "It is the enemy of your revolution, your
Islam, and your resistance to American bullying."
Accordingly, radical Muslims back up their words with deeds.
They have a history of violence against American, Western, and
even Muslim interests. But the movement did not appear
spontaneously. Rather, it has taken 14 centuries to evolve.
>From Conquests to Conquered
The history begins with the birth of Islam in the year 610, when
the prophet Muhammed received his divine mission and accepted
Allah's instructions for a new religion that commanded belief in
one God. For the next 22 years, Muhammed served as a
transmitter of Allah's message, and his Muslim empire grew to
encompass most of the Arabian Peninsula. After the prophet's
death, the Muslim empire continued to expand until the 17th
century, when Muslims were unquestionably the world's greatest
military force, having conquered extensive territory and converted
millions throughout the Middle East and Southern Europe. Islam
had also achieved unmatched advances in architecture, art, law,
mathematics, and science.
With the exception of battling Christian Crusaders, most Muslims
had little to do with the West. In fact, Ottoman Turkey, the
dominant Islamic power in the 16th century, viewed the West
with what Islam expert Bernard Lewis, in his book Islam and the
West, calls "amused disdain" for its inferior culture and religion.
By the 17th century, however, as the West achieved military
superiority, Lewis writes that the tone shifted to "alarmed dislike."
By 1769, the Russians handed the Turks their first sound defeat,
pointing to a new and difficult road ahead for Islam. Instead of
conquering, the Muslims were conquered.
The empire soon unraveled. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte led his
expedition into Egypt. In 1830, the French seized Algeria. Nine
years later, the British coopted Aden (modern Yemen). In 1881,
the French occupied Tunisia, and in 1882 the English tightened
their grip on Egypt. In 1911, Russia captured parts of Persia. That
same year, Italy announced the annexation of Tripoli, leading to
the eventual creation of the modern state of Libya. In 1912, the
French extended their influence to Morocco. By the end of World
War I, the Ottoman Empire had lost the Middle East, as France
and England carved up the Muslim empire as spoils of war. The
Muslim world could do little more than look on helplessly.
But the most painful Western penetration into the Islamic world
was undoubtedly the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
To the embarrassment of the Muslim world, a unified front of
Arab armies lost a bitter war to the newly formed country of only
600,000 Jews.
While the West may no longer have long-term imperialist designs
on the Middle East, its influence is ubiquitous. This includes
advancements in practical and physical sciences, modern
weaponry and military reform, mass communication, law, and
political reform, not to mention its fair share of McDonald's
golden arches. These Western concepts and institutions, when
transplanted to the Muslim world, are often destabilizing. They
threaten the status quo, and are often too radically different to fit
comfortably within a deeply rooted, traditional, and generally
static Muslim culture. In short, the Islamic world may not have
been ready for some of these changes.
The Rise of the Radicals
While many Muslims adapted to the fast-paced changes common
to Western industrialization and modernization, some Muslims
rejected them. Instead, they created a rigid ideology imbedded in
the traditional values and laws of the Koran. This is the
phenomenon known today as Islamic fundamentalism, or
Islamism.
Islamism came to be seen as a struggle to return to the glorious
days when Islam reigned supreme. It represents a yearning for the
"pure" Islam as practiced by the prophet. Not unlike the American
Amish, the movement rejects much that is innovative. Islamists,
however, take the rejection of modernity a step further. They
perceive those who have introduced these innovations (the West)
as its enemy.
Western influence, however, was unstoppable. Consequently,
writes Islamic fundamentalism expert Emmanuel Sivan in his
book Radical Islam, a sense of "doom and gloom" developed
among religious Muslims. Some perceived this world to be "the
prison of the believers and the paradise of the unbelievers,"
according to Lewis. To them, this explained why Islamic values
were losing out to the secularism of the West. Others argued that
Allah was angry with Muslims for straying from the righteous
path and was therefore punishing them for their disobedience.
In time, the Islamist vision crystallized. They not only rejected the
influence of the West, they rejected the legitimacy of their own
governments in the Arabic world, which they saw as subservient
to the West. Thus, the overthrow of these regimes became an
important part of the Islamist agenda.
The Makings of a Movement
The biggest push for this agenda came in 1928, with the founding
of the Ikhwan al-Muslimun or Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This
organization became the cornerstone for most of today's Islamist
movements, advocating Islamic beliefs and values as expressed by
the common Egyptian. The organization, founded by Hassan al-
Banna (1906-1949), rejected western rule and England's secular
influence over Egypt. Without religious governance, al-Banna
believed the Muslim world would be "a society of cultural
mongrels and spiritual half-castes."
"Politics is part of religion," he wrote. "Caesar and what belongs
to Caesar is for God Almighty alone Islam commanded a unity of
life; to impose upon Islam the Christian separation of loyalties
[into church and state] is to deny it its essential meaning and very
existence."
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood soon developed armed cells that
attacked the government and its supporters. Not surprisingly, the
movement was soon outlawed. But this did not stop the group
from continuing its activities. In an attempt to quell the
movement, al-Banna was executed in Cairo in 1949.
However, al-Banna's death did not hinder the growth of Islamism.
The Muslim Brotherhood found further inspiration in the 1950s
and 1960s from Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), a radical exegete who
provided Koranic justifications for attacking secular Arab leaders
that called themselves believers, but who did not run their
governments according to the shari'a or Islamic law. In his most
famous book, Milestones, he advocated jihad, or holy war, as a
means to shake off the shackles of repressive secular regimes.
"This movement . . . harnesses material power and invokes
jihad for eliminating the Jahili [ignorant] order and its
supporting authority, for they interfere with and prevent
the efforts to reform the beliefs and ideas of humanity at
large, and by dint of its resources and aberrant methods
forces them to obey it and makes them bow before human
lords instead of the Almighty Lord... The very purpose of
this movement is to set human beings free from the yoke
of human enslavement and make them serve the One and
Only God."
Qutb was executed by the Egyptian regime in 1966 for
propagating Islamic radicalism and political violence. Still, the
movement survived. In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood movement
has since gone global. The organization today has hundreds of
branches in over 70 countries worldwide.
Militant Islam also gained momentum after the devastating Arab
loss to Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Yet another defeat
for the Muslim world came at the hands of the Jews, a people
Muslims regard as religiously inferior. Worse was the fact that
Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site, had been conquered. Looking
for answers, increasing numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims
returned to their Islamic roots.
In 1969, Colonel Mu'ammar Qaddaffi took power in Libya by
military coup. Qaddaffi, notes historian Raphael Israeli, soon
began to emphasize "the trend toward the predominance of Islam
in the making of the domestic and international policies of Islamic
nations." With vast oil wealth behind him, Qaddaffi financed
various terror operations against what he perceived to be an
imperialist West. Qaddaffi, today, remains one of history's largest
financiers of militant Islamic terror.
Finally, a decade later occurred what many historians call "the
earthquake." In 1979, Iran became the first modern Islamic
republic, as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew Iran's
secular regime and established a new order in which shari'a
became law. Suddenly, Islamism was no longer an ideology of
movements. It had inspired a state.
The 23-Year War
America's first violent introduction to militant Islam came shortly
after Khomeini's Islamic Republic was established in 1979, when
Islamic extremists seized the U.S. embassy in the Iranian capital
of Tehran. For 444 days, the militants held 52 Americans hostage.
After a botched helicopter rescue attempt, America agreed to
release nearly $8 billion in Iranian assets to free the hostages. The
hostages were returned and America breathed a sigh of relief.
Most people felt the nightmare had ended. In fact, it was only
beginning.
Iran, we soon learned, had successfully "exported" radical Islam to
other parts of the Islamic world. Perhaps the easiest target of all
was Lebanon, a small, war-torn state that had been bloodied by
years of internal conflict.
When American soldiers arrived in Lebanon for a peacekeeping
mission, militant Islam struck again. There were two deadly
attacks against Americans in 1983. The first was the April 18
bombing of the American embassy in Beirut. Six months later
came a suicide attack on the U.S. Marine barracks on October 23
that killed 241.
The suicide attack was America's first experience with this kind of
terror. In time, it was learned that the attack was sanctioned by an
Iranian-backed guerrilla movement called Hizbullah (Party of
God). The group's spiritual guide, Muhammed Hussein Fadlallah,
contended in a fiery speech that "the oppressed nations do not
have the technology and destructive weapons America and Europe
have. They must thus fight with special means of their own."
These special means were apparently too much for America. U.S.
forces left Lebanon several months later.
Encouraged by an ambivalent America, a rash of militant Islamist
violence followed. First, the American embassy in Beirut was
bombed again on September 20, 1984. Then, in December 1984
on a hijacked plane in Tehran, Islamic extremists tortured and
murdered two Americans. This came alongside the abduction of
more than a dozen Americans in Beirut between March 1984 and
January 1985. Finally, in June 1985, Islamic militants hijacked yet
another flight with more than 100 Americans aboard, killing one
of them.
Militant Islam resurfaced on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am
Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259
people on board, as well as 11 residents hit by the fuselage on the
ground. The flight was en route to New York from Frankfurt,
Germany, via London.
The movement found further impetus in 1989 from the furor over
Salman Rushdie and his controversial book, The Satanic Verses.
Taking into account the passage below, it should come as no
surprise that the book offended Muslims worldwide.
"Amid the palm-trees of the oasis Gibreel appeared to the
Prophet and found himself spouting rules, rules, rules,
until the faithful could scarcely bear the prospect of any
more revelation, Salman said, rules about every damn
thing, if a man farts let him turn his face to the wind, a rule
about which hand to use for the purpose of cleaning one's
behind. It was as if no aspect of human existence was to be
left unregulated, free. The revelation the recitation told the
faithful how much to eat, how deeply they should sleep,
and which sexual positions had received divine sanction,
so that they learned that sodomy and the missionary
position were approved of by the arch-angel, whereas the
forbidden postures included all those in which the female
was on top."
Rather than merely stating that the book was offensive, or banning
the book from Muslim bookstores, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini sentenced Rushdie to death for blasphemy:
"In the name of God the almighty. We belong to God and
to Him we shall return. I would like to inform all intrepid
Muslims in the world that the author of the book Satanic
Verses . . . and those publishers who were aware of its
contents, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous
Muslims to execute them quickly, where they find them,
so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctities.
Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a
martyr, God willing. In addition, if anyone who has access
to the author of the book does not possess the power to
execute him, he should point him out to the people so that
he may be punished for his actions. May God's blessing be
upon you. Ruhollah Musavi al-Khomeini."
Khomeini's fatwa, or decree, sparked an unprecedented wave of
international Islamist violence. In the year to come, book agents
were stabbed, newspapers were firebombed, and demonstrations
regularly resulted in bloodshed.
The Battle Comes Home
In time, the Rushdie Affair subsided, but the war continued. On
February 23, 1993, a large bomb exploded in New York's World
Trade Center, killing six and wounding 1,000. Led by Sheikh
Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh of New York," the plot
was pinned to al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a radical Egyptian group
previously thought to be contained in that country. The American
government did a terrific job of putting the culprits behind bars,
but left the real counter-terrorism dirty work to Egyptian President
Husni Mubarak, who continues to battle the insurgent group
today.
But perhaps more shocking than the first World Trade Center
attack itself was the realization that the culprits had been living in
America for years. Worse, their intentions had been made clear
well before the attacks. Earlier that year in Brooklyn, Rahman
fingered America as the foremost enemy of Islam. "We must be
terrorists," he said, "and we must terrorize the enemies of Islam
and frighten them and disturb them and shake the earth under
their feet." When the case was brought to trial, it was learned that
the bombers had hoped to bring down the World Trade Center
something that would take another eight years to accomplish.
On October 3, 1993, America suffered another defeat against
militant Islam, this time in Somalia. As depicted in the recent
movie Blackhawk Down, two American Army Blackhawk
helicopters were shot down and a third crash-landed on a botched
mission designed to capture a radical Muslim warlord. The result
was that 18 Americans died and 78 were injured.
In 1995, a suicide car-bomber targeted a military training school
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five American instructors. A year
later, a truck bomb exploded, destroying part of a housing
complex used by American Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia. In that attack, 19 Americans were killed and 240 were
injured. The U.S. responded by imposing sanctions against
Sudan's Islamist regime, where a terrorist named Osama bin
Laden was staying as a guest.
Meanwhile, in 1995, a previously unknown group called the
Taliban made headlines when it captured more than half of
Afghanistan after years of bloody internal conflict. While brutal
violence became commonplace and human rights were virtually
nonexistent, the group only began to receive notoriety when it
provided asylum for the fugitive bin Laden in 1997. With safe
haven in Afghanistan, bin Laden's al-Qaeda (pronounced al-Ka-
ee-da, not al-Kay-da) organization began to operate with
increasing potency.
Al-Qaeda Coalesces
Despite all the media hype, al-Qaeda (literally, "the base") is
actually just an umbrella group that facilitates and orchestrates the
operations of Islamic militants around the globe. It's a kind of
Internet for terrorists, whereby information, resources, and people
are connected and funneled through a hub. In other words, Osama
bin Laden may or may not be directly responsible for the attacks
of September 11, the USS Cole, or the twin embassies in East
Africa. However, bin Laden's organization, since its inception in
1988, can be tied to planning these operations, as well as to other
plots around the globe.
Al-Qaeda's roots are in the CIA-sponsored Afghan war against the
Soviets (1980-1989). During that time, with the help of U.S.
weapons and funding, radical Muslims from all over the world
came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation. Bin Laden,
the son of a Saudi millionaire, was among them. He reportedly
won the hearts of his fellow mujahedin (jihad fighters) by not only
fighting valiantly, but by financing a recruiting office for the
Afghanistan jihad.
Specifically, bin Laden and a Palestinian militant named Abdallah
Azzam opened Maktab al-Khidamat, or the Services Office. Bin
Laden reportedly paid to bring the new recruits to Afghanistan and
built training camps for them. Further, "the Prince," as he is
called, imported experts to train his new mujahedin in guerilla
tactics and terror warfare. Over the years, thousands trained at his
camps.
In 1988, as the war wound down, bin Laden began to forge an
official network out of these Muslim extremists. He called this
network al-Qaeda. For 14 years now, although many of these jihad
fighters have returned to their home countries around the world,
bin Laden has kept that network alive through the Internet, cell
phones, faxes, and other high-tech means.
The goals of al-Qaeda are three-pronged. First, the organization
seeks to overthrow what it sees as the corrupt and heretical
governments of today's Muslim states, specifically bin Laden's
home country, Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden sees the Saudi regime
American lackeys, especially since the royal family has allowed
U.S. servicemen to stay in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf War.
Accordingly, al-Qaeda views the U.S. as the primary enemy of
Islam, and seeks to destroy it.
Finally, al-Qaeda seeks to bolster the efforts of jihad groups
throughout the world. This includes, but is not limited to, Algeria,
Chechnya, Eritrea, and Somalia. Afghanistan and Sudan, two
regimes that had adopted strict Islamist laws, were also heavily
influenced by al-Qaeda.
Bin Laden Emerges
At first, bin Laden's name was only loosely linked to several acts
of terrorism. According to the U.S. State Department, his network
was implicated in the December 1992 attacks on a hotel in Yemen
that injured several tourists, but was probably intended for
American servicemen. His name came up again in connection
with the first World Trade Center bombing and the 1993 attacks
against American servicemen in Somalia. Bin Laden's network
was additionally said to have assisted the terrorists who tried to
assassinate Egyptian President Husni Mubarak in 1995, and those
who were responsible for the November 1995 attack on American
training personnel in Riyadh. He was also tied to the bombing that
killed about 30 people in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in June of 1996.
But it wasn't until February 23, 1998, that we began to see the real
face of Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, with the
creation of an organization he called "The Islamic World Front for
the Struggle Against the Jews and the Crusaders."
In the Islamic World Front statement, the group called upon
"Muslim ulema, leaders, youths, and people" to "kill the
Americans and their allies civilian and military This is in
accordance with the words of Almighty God."
With the creation of this umbrella group, it was apparent that al-
Qaeda had a wider reach than previously imagined. Signatories of
the statement included leaders of the radical Egyptian groups al-
Gama'a al-Islamiyya and al-Jihad, as well as the Pakistani
Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan and the Jihad Movement in
Bangladesh.
Still despite these links, and the newly-revealed network of terror,
U.S. attorney Mary Jo White could only indirectly link al-Qaeda
to the training of the tribesmen who attacked U.S. soldiers in
Somalia. This changed in August 1998, when al-Qaeda operative
Mohammed Sadiq Odeh was arrested in Pakistan. Under FBI
interrogation, Odeh provided details of bin Laden's international
network, as well as his role in the embassy bombings. Since then,
other suspects have provided equally vital information.
In June 1999, Bin Laden was added to the FBI's most wanted list.
One month later, U.S. President Bill Clinton imposed sanctions on
the Taliban for harboring him. Despite the pressure, bin Laden
continued to run al-Qaeda from caves in Afghanistan with
increasing efficiency. In fact, U.S. intelligence obtained a copy of
a six-volume terrorism manual used by bin Laden to train his
recruits for al-Qaeda.
U.S. intelligence has since foiled many al-Qaeda plots, including
one designed to disrupt millennium celebrations in December
1999. Still, while countless attacks have been averted, the USS
Cole bombing in 2000 and the September 11 attacks on the
Pentagon and World Trade Center are proof that al-Qaeda plots
against American interests can still slip beneath the radar.
With the destruction of the Taliban regime, and Osama bin Laden
on the run, al-Qaeda has had to restructure. If bin Laden is caught,
al-Qaeda will suffer another serious blow. Still, because it is only
a facilitating network for militant Islam, the likelihood of al-
Qaeda's longevity is almost certainly assured. Thus, the prospect
of a long and protracted war against militant Islam is effectively
guaranteed.
A Little Perspective
Given that militant Islam has plagued America for 22 years, and
that bin Laden has terrorized America for 14 years, the attacks of
September 11 should not have been surprising. A trend had been
established. So, perhaps the biggest shock of that tragic day was
the nation's utter surprise. Psychologically, America was
completely unprepared for the attacks. Why?
Former CIA director James Woolsey has one explanation. In a
presentation to the Middle East Forum in New York City on
March 7, 2001, he compared the 1980s and 1990s in America to
another period in U.S. history the Roaring Twenties. In the 1920s,
America was euphoric after its resounding recent victory in the
First World War. A feeling of invincibility swept through America
that led the nation to completely overlook the rise of Hitler in
Germany. As Europe descended into war, America stood idly
across the Atlantic in a state of denial. Finally, with a surprise
attack on Pearl Harbor, America was shocked, angered, and thrust
unwillingly into war.
Today's America is not much different. Thanks to exponential
economic growth, an unprecedented technology boom, and its
status as the world's lone superpower, America grew by leaps and
bounds through the 1980s and 1990s, and understandably became
somewhat complacent. Our government, all the while, refused to
face up to a new enemy. Militant Islam had already conquered
three Middle East countries: Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan. All the
while, more than a dozen other regimes around the world were
fighting for their very existence against a militant Islamic
movement that grew stronger by the day. It took a horrific day like
September 11 for Americans to realize the problem could no
longer be ignored.
In fact, our consistent disinclination to respond to earlier attacks
lies behind the events of September 11. Consider bin Laden's own
words. "We have seen in the last decade the decline of the
American government and the weakness of the American soldier.
He is ready to wage cold wars but unprepared to fight hot
wars...We are ready for all occasions, we rely on God."
What bin Laden said back then, in 1998, is that America didn't
deter him. Three years later, he felt emboldened enough to attack
America because we had balked at almost every prior showdown.
America might have the strongest military in the world, but it has
a history of ineffectuality against militant Islam. In the absence of
U.S. reprisals, without deterrence, militant Islam found the
confidence to strike again.
America Fights Back
With the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom, America is now
struggling to reassert that deterrence. America handily picked
apart the Taliban in Afghanistan, and is carefully weighing its
options for a next target. The next target, however, will not be as
easy to identify.
For one, the target is not easy to see. From Morocco in Northwest
Africa to Malaysia in Southeast Asia, militant Islam continues to
grow by stealth. Adherents of militant Islam account for some 15-
20 percent of the Muslim world, according to Daniel Pipes, an
expert on the subject. This means that more than 150 million
people are part of the problem. To make matters worse, they hide
among the moderates. They don't wear uniforms and rarely
identify themselves.
Fortunately, we can pinpoint a few of their centers of influence.
Accordingly, America has turned up the heat in such countries as
Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where radical Muslims have operated
freely for decades. Working to stay in the good graces of an
awakened (and angry) United States, these countries, among
others, have worked to coordinate with American intelligence,
crack down on their militants, and preempt an American
operation. Indeed, one could call this Operation Enduring
Freedom's "Phase 1.5." Only time will tell if these countries can
battle terror effectively on their own.
Looking Ahead
After that, America faces hard decisions. In this new and long-
overdue war against the forces of terror, the path ahead is
daunting. Militant Islam has strongholds in Algeria, Egypt,
Somalia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the Palestinian territories,
Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia,
Nigeria, and Pakistan, to name just a few countries. The challenge
now will be finding ways to destroy the radical infrastructure and
arrest or kill militants while simultaneously bolstering the
influence of moderate Muslims. How to accomplish this task is
unclear.
To its credit, the Bush administration has made all the right moves
so far. For the moment, radical Islam appears to be beating a
retreat. But the battle is not yet won. The roots of militant Islam
run deep and may take many years to eradicate. Accordingly, this
country must prepare itself for future confrontations. More
importantly, Americans must understand that this is not a war on
terrorism. Indeed, terrorism is only a tactic. This struggle is
against a radical, utopian ideology and those who carry out
violence in its name.
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