The "war on terror" is being rebadged (by some) as "a global
struggle against violent extremism", but still those doing 
the "marketing" show little apparent understanding that
"terror" is simply a means to an end - in the case of ObL
and friends, the end is the restoration of the Caliphate
and the introduction of Shariah law.

It will be interesting to see what happens when ObL and
friends come up against the reconstructionists, dominionists,
and "judeo-noahides" who believe that they have a divine mandate
to establish theocracies based on "old testament" Israel, using
the Ten Commandments or the seven "noahide laws" as the basis.

The next year will be very interesting indeed.

================================================================

Fanatics around the world dream of the Caliph's return
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 01/08/2005)

Global conflict

It was, according to The Daily Telegraph, "one of the most astonishing
acts of suicidal recklessness in the history of a modern or ancient
times". On March 3, 1924, Turkish nationalists abolished the
Caliphate, the position of supreme leadership handed down from the
time of the Prophet Muhammad's first successors in the 7th century.

As Abdel-Mejid II, the last Caliph, went into exile - and later died
in Paris - this newspaper predicted "the inevitable stirring up of the
Moslem world". Today the Muslim world - and a good part of the non-
Muslim world - is undeniably "stirred up".

From the London Underground to the streets of Baghdad and the hotels
of Sharm el-Sheikh, the Muslim fanatics who blow themselves up in the
name of Islam believe their "jihad" will ultimately defeat the infidel
West and restore a Caliph to rule the billion-strong Islamic nation,
or umma, according to Islamic law, or sharia.

For Osama bin Laden and his followers the end of the Caliphate was the
moment of historic rupture, when foreigners broke up the Ottoman
Empire at the end of the First World War and colonised Muslim lands.
Even after independence, the regimes they left behind were godless and
foreigners meddled in Muslim affairs, not least by supporting Israel.

In his first video released after the September 11 attacks, bin Laden
declared: "What the United States tastes today is insignificant
compared to what we have tasted for tens of years.

"Our nation has been tasting this humiliation and contempt for more
than 80 years. Its sons are being killed, its blood is being shed, its
holy places are being attacked, and it is not being ruled according to
what God has decreed."

The long crisis of the Islamic world, from Napoleon's invasion of
Egypt in 1798 to George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003, provokes
two broad responses among Muslims. One is to "modernise" by adopting
western models, often in order to stand up to the West more
effectively. The other is to return to a golden age by restoring the
tenets of Islam.

[...]

It was not until the 1970s that Islamists came to the fore through a
combination of factors: Israel's defeat of Arab armies in 1967 which
broke the prestige of Arab nationalists; Saudi Arabia's petro-dollars
which gave Islamists the means to proselytise around the Muslim world;
and Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution which overthrew the Shah
of Iran in 1979.

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the same year was the rallying
cause for Sunni Arab Islamists, including bin Laden, who waged a jihad
against the Soviet Union with the help of Saudi money and American
weapons, and the co-operation of Pakistan's secret services. Apart
from occasional bursts of violence, such as the assassination of
Egypt's president Anwar Sadat in 1981 after he signed a peace treaty
with Israel, Sunni Islamists concentrated on fighting the Soviets and
building grassroots support at home.

The task of confronting America was taken up principally by Shias, the
Iranian clerics and their Lebanese allies, Hizbollah, which pioneered
the use of suicide bombings against the American marines, French and
Israeli forces in Lebanon.

The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989 and the end
of the Cold War was a turning point. Just like the early Arab and
Muslim armies had defeated the Persian empire and then gradually
overcame the Byzantines, the Sunni "Arab Afghans" believed they had
caused the collapse of the Soviet Union and would now bring down the
other infidel empire, the United States. The deployment of US troops
in Saudi Arabia to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 further
radicalised Islamists such as bin Laden. Yet most jihadis still gave
priority to fighting "the near enemy", that is Arab regimes, rather
than the "faraway enemy", Israel and its American ally. After the fall
of Kabul to the Mujahideen in 1992, Arab fighters returning home
ignited bloody insurrections, particularly in Egypt and Algeria.

But as these insurgencies were crushed, more militants became
convinced that the only way to get rid of the impious governments 
was to attack the "faraway enemy" that supported them. The 1993 lorry
bombing of the World Trade Centre, carried out by followers of the
blind Egyptian sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, was the first attempt to
take the war to American soil. Five years later, from their refuge in
Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader
of Egypt's Islamic Jihad, announced their merger to create the "World
Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders". They issued a
fatwa declaring that "to kill Americans and their allies, civilians,
and military is an individual duty of every Muslim who is able."

Their attacks - which saw the suicide bombing of US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998, and the crippling of the USS Cole in Aden in
2002 - climaxed with September 11. Declaring a "global war on
terrorism", President George W Bush quickly toppled the Taliban in
Kabul and scattered al-Qa'eda's leadership. However al-Qa'eda
fragments or its sympathisers have since carried out a succession of
bombings - many of them suicide missions - against western targets in
Tunisia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
Spain, Iraq, Egypt and now Britain.

[...]

Zawahiri said jihadis should not lose sight of the ultimate goal - the
creation of an Islamic state in the heart of the Muslim world, notably
in Egypt, as a base from which to "lead the Islamic world in a jihad
against the West" and recreate the Caliphate.

Without securing an Islamic state, "our actions will mean nothing more
than mere and repeated disturbances".

Since turning on the "faraway enemy", the jihadis have certainly
caused much "disturbance", but by Zawahiri's own measure, they have
yet to achieve the central objective of seizing real power. In any
case, there is nobody in sight who can claim the Caliph's mantle.

                           -==-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/01/
wislam101.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/01/ixnewstop.html



Cheers, Steve..

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