IRRATIONAL RATIONALIZATIONS

These Men are Fanatics and Must be Beaten - Editorial
The Islamists will not be satisfied with the American withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or Iraq, the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, or the Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. To the Islamist, these are merely restitutions, the recovery of what is deemed to be rightfully Islamic. The real project is the extension of the Islamic territory across the globe, and the establishment of a worldwide "caliphate" founded on sharia law and the temporal reign of ayatollahs and imams. The fanatics must be defeated. (Telegraph-UK)

Giving the Hatemongers No Place to Hide - Thomas L. Friedman
After every major terrorist incident, the excuse makers come out to tell us why imperialism, Zionism, colonialism, or Iraq explains why the terrorists acted. These excuse makers are just one notch less despicable than the terrorists and also deserve to be exposed. When you live in an open society like London, where anyone with a grievance can publish an article, run for office, or start a political movement, the notion that blowing up a busload of innocent civilians in response to Iraq is somehow "understandable" is outrageous. There is no political justification for 9/11, 7/7, or 7/21. (New York Times)

When Denial Can Kill - Irshad Manji
Three years ago I asked the political leader of Islamic Jihad in Gaza: "What's the difference between suicide, which the Koran condemns, and martyrdom?" "Suicide," he replied, "is done out of despair. But remember: most of our martyrs today were very successful in their earthly lives." The London bombers had immigrant parents who had worked hard to make something of themselves and several of the 9/11 hijackers came from wealthy families. While our spokesmen assure us that Islam is an innocent bystander in today's terrorism, those who commit terrorist acts often tell us otherwise. For too long, we Muslims have been sticking fingers in our ears and chanting "Islam means peace" to drown out the negative noise from our holy book. Far better to own up to it. (TIME)

Why Do They Hate Us? - Olivier Roy
Are the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Middle Eastern conflicts? If the answer is yes, the solution is simple to formulate, although not to achieve: leave Afghanistan and Iraq, solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. But if the answer is no, as I suspect it is, we should look deeper into the radicalization of young, Westernized Muslims. In justifying its terrorist attacks by referring to Iraq, al-Qaeda is looking for popularity or at least legitimacy among Muslims. But this is largely propaganda, and Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinians are hardly the motivating factors behind its global jihad.

First, let's consider the chronology. The Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, not before. From the beginning, al-Qaeda's fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir. Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden's mentor, gave up supporting the PLO long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character. (New York Times)