"...one should be hesitant to politicize counter terrorism analysis"
Hi Neil, thank you for that admonition. I for one have no desire to make political capitol out of this or anything else like it, for anyone.
The news story actually suggests it was this counterterror advisor that put this in politcal terms(not in the way I think you suggested we shouldn't) but in describing people that are waging Jihad as victims of...
"political, economic and social forces,"
And this is to suggest that what is motivating people to do these things IS NOT ISLAM itself.
That is a significant question: is Islam a political, social, economic, and religous belief system that has as one of its central and core tennants militaristic expansion and conquest of the entire world.
The question isn't as small as whether 'violent jihadist Ideology' represents a threat to western civilization, but does Islam itself represent a threat to freedom and liberty of conscience for the entire world.
Is religous freedom a tennant of Islam or is it an ideological tyranny that will be forced upon any people it comes in contact with whenever it has sufficient power and influence to impose it? Whenever Sharia can be made their law and the non-believers put under the tax?
It may be that Jihad is a mulitfacted word with many shades of meaning.
A Methodist minister named Chales B. Galloway, writting over a hundred years about about Islam said this:
'Mohammedanism has produced an enslaved personality. "Its Koran demands intellectual slavery; its harem requires domestic slavery; its state implies and enforces both a religous and a civil slavery." The Koran puts a premium upon war, offering the highest rewards to those who slay the greatest number of infidels. Mohammed's cardinal principle, that the end justifies the means, consecrated every form of deception and lying, and encouraged every sort of persecution and violence; commercial confidence is almost unknown, and hence there are few banks and buisness partnerships. The citizen is the slave of the state; he has no rights to be respected. Mohammedanism is an absolute despotism, the most gigantic engine of intolerance and persecution the world ever saw.'
"Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 59:
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 288:
Narrated Ibn Masud:
I witnessed Al-Miqdad bin Al-Aswad in a scene which would have been dearer to me than anything had I been the hero of that scene. He (i.e. Al-Miqdad) came to the Prophet while the Prophet was urging the Muslims to fight with the pagans. Al-Miqdad said, "We will not say as the People of Moses said: Go you and your Lord and fight you two. (5.27). But we shall fight on your right and on your left and in front of you and behind you." I saw the face of the Prophet getting bright with happiness, for that saying delighted him."
Servants are not above thier master.
