by Rod Dreher
Belief Net
Raymond Ibrahim, translator and editor of “The Al Qaeda Reader,” points out that if you read Osama bin Laden’s messages to the West, they’re full of reciprocity — the idea that we, al-Qaeda, go after the West to avenge sins against Muslims by the kaffir (infidels). But, Ibrahim says, if you read the words bin Laden and his followers direct towards Muslims, there’s none of bin Laden’s rhetoric about the need to punish the West for this or that thing. It’s all about the theological command for Muslims to attack everyone who isn’t Muslim.
This is important because it makes it clear that there is no way to stop al-Qaeda and its ideological cohorts, short of killing them. We could withdraw every Westerner from Islamic lands, and all the Jews in Israel could move to Broward County, and that would not deter al-Qaeda one whit. They hate us and fight us because we are not Muslim. The rest of their rhetoric is simply another form of warfare.
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