Word: islamics
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Much remains a mystery about Fatah al-Islam, the Palestinian-led Sunni Muslim fundamentalist faction that sprang up six months ago and is at the center of Lebanon's latest fighting. What is known, however, indicates that the group, based near the northern coastal city of Tripoli, is a product of past Middle East conflict, a manifestation of present unrest in Lebanon and an ominous sign of future turmoil throughout the region...
...fighting continued, it was common to link Fatah al-Islam to the Syrian regime, and to see the group as a tool in the hands of Damascus to foment chaos in Lebanon and head off a U.N. tribunal that may prosecute Syrian officials for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But there is a longer-term worry that goes beyond any possible Syrian connections-that Fatah al-Islam is one of a group of armed, extremist factions that have been spawned in the triangle of political instability from Baghdad to Gaza to Tripoli. Those groups include Iraqi...
...Fatah al-Islam's roots can loosely be traced to Israel's 1948 war of independence, when thousands of Palestinians fled their homes for a dozen refugee camps in Lebanon. The squalid, overcrowded camps became breeding grounds for the Palestine Liberation Organization's guerrilla groups. After Israel's invasion in 1982, designed to evict the P.L.O. from Lebanon, the Syrian regime launched a campaign of its own against Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization, sponsoring a splinter group that called itself Fatah al-Intifada. That faction, backed by Syrian artillery, drove Arafat out of Tripoli...
...late 2006, a fighter named Shaker al-Absi broke away from Fatah al-Intifada and called his new faction Fatah al-Islam. This time, the split appeared to be rooted in the growth of al-Qaeda and the terrorism unleashed after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, another indication of extremism's viral spread since Sept. 11, 2001. The original Fatah always espoused a secular Palestinian state, as did Fatah al-Intifada. But Fatah al-Islam not only preaches a Salafist brand of Islam, but appears to have at least logistical links with al-Qaeda. In 2004, a Jordanian court convicted...
...Lebanon and you quickly understand that Osama bin Laden is a symbol of resistance. In the run-up to the Iraq war, TIME Beirut correspondent Nick Blanford and I visited 'Ayn al-Hilweh, a Palestinian camp outside of Sidon. Two things struck me. A fundamentalist Sunni group, Usbat al-Islam, occupied half the camp, which we didn't enter because we probably wouldn't have made it back out. And, two, the Fatah commander was already recruiting fighters to go to Iraq to fight the occupation. Both sides were signed up for the jihad...